Today we have been working flat out on the wine making, but in the days before our 2013 harvest, whilst we were waiting for a suitable break in the horrible, wet weather, Angela and I decided to hold a private tasting…. and what an interesting tasting it proved to be! Each time we bottle a tank of our albariño we are obliged to send several sample bottles to our denomination office for tasting and analysis – once approved we get our tirilla (the small Rias Baixas sticker on the back of every bottle). At the same time we also send our own independent sample to our local, accredited laboratory, in order that we have two separate analyses to compare. Finally, during the bottling itself we also take random samples that we mark carefully and keep for reference (and also in case of any future problem). By the time all these samples have been taken it’s a wonder that there’s any wine left in the tank for our customers!

The range of these ‘reference’ samples that we keep extends back for several years and so, now and again, it’s really interesting to pull out a few and taste them to find out how they have evolved. This latest tasting was for wines bottled during 2011 – a selection of 2009 and 2010 vintages.

The first thing that I have to tell you, hand on heart, is that there was not one oxidised bottle. One or two were starting to show their age, and there were certainly a few secondary aromas developing, but every bottle was still quite drinkable. Not bad for wines bottled up to three years ago. Please remember that wines stored in tank will always keep much better and remain much fresher than those in bottle, singularly the most important reason that we only bottle tanks as and when they are required. (In tank there is virtually no oxygen present as our wines are stored under nitrogen). Specially selected, older ‘vendimia’ wines sold by a few other bodegas in our region are made this way – stored in tank for several years, and then only bottled just before being released into the market (in a similar way to RD champagne). Of course it would be fairly simple for us to make selected wines such as this, but then I remind myself that our production is already complicated enough when I think of the legal label requirements of our different export markets.

In tasting older albariños there are several new words that can appear in the tasting vocabulary – of course this, like all wine tasting, is purely subjective. For example, looking at my notes from this latest tasting you will find words such as honey, toffee, caramel, sour cream, ripe apple, vegetal, mature fruit – but without one mention of oxidation. Please don’t forget, it was Robert Joseph who once wrote about our albariño “would not disappoint Burgundy drinkers”, and if you taste a more mature example you might begin to understand exactly what he meant by this.

Today we have been working flat out on the wine making, but in the days before our 2013 harvest, whilst we were waiting for a suitable break in the horrible, wet weather, Angela and I decided to hold a private tasting…. and what an interesting tasting it proved to be! Each time we bottle a tank of our albariño we are obliged to send several sample bottles to our denomination office for tasting and analysis – once approved we get our tirilla (the small Rias Baixas sticker on the back of every bottle). At the same time we also send our own independent sample to our local, accredited laboratory, in order that we have two separate analyses to compare. Finally, during the bottling itself we also take random samples that we mark carefully and keep for reference (and also in case of any future problem). By the time all these samples have been taken it’s a wonder that there’s any wine left in the tank for our customers!

The range of these ‘reference’ samples that we keep extends back for several years and so, now and again, it’s really interesting to pull out a few and taste them to find out how they have evolved. This latest tasting was for wines bottled during 2011 – a selection of 2009 and 2010 vintages.

The first thing that I have to tell you, hand on heart, is that there was not one oxidised bottle. One or two were starting to show their age, and there were certainly a few secondary aromas developing, but every bottle was still quite drinkable. Not bad for wines bottled up to three years ago. Please remember that wines stored in tank will always keep much better and remain much fresher than those in bottle, singularly the most important reason that we only bottle tanks as and when they are required. (In tank there is virtually no oxygen present as our wines are stored under nitrogen). Specially selected, older ‘vendimia’ wines sold by a few other bodegas in our region are made this way – stored in tank for several years, and then only bottled just before being released into the market (in a similar way to RD champagne). Of course it would be fairly simple for us to make selected wines such as this, but then I remind myself that our production is already complicated enough when I think of the legal label requirements of our different export markets.

In tasting older albariños there are several new words that can appear in the tasting vocabulary – of course this, like all wine tasting, is purely subjective. For example, looking at my notes from this latest tasting you will find words such as honey, toffee, caramel, sour cream, ripe apple, vegetal, mature fruit – but without one mention of oxidation. Please don’t forget, it was Robert Joseph who once wrote about our albariño “would not disappoint Burgundy drinkers”, and if you taste a more mature example you might begin to understand exactly what he meant by this.