The Surprising Wines of the Comunitat Valenciana
April 12, 2009
Guest Blog: Gerry Dawes
Article © Gerry Dawes
The exotic, once Moorish-dominated Comunitat Valenciana— which encompasses the provinces of Valencia, Alicante and Castelló—and its capital, the ancient, but suddenly ultramodern and rapidly growing Mediterranean port city of Valencia, have long been known for its namesake oranges, its sunny beaches that have become nirvana for northern Europeans who flock to Valencia like Americans do to Florida, and its wild end-of-winter, rites-of-spring fiesta called Las Fallas.
Gastronomically, Valencia is known world-wide for paella—in reality a wide variety of rice dishes (arroces) made with local bomba or senia rice—and internationally for its Mediterranean seafood, those oranges and clementines from Castelló (which also produces excellent black truffles), almonds and almond turrón candy from Jijona, and dates from the largest date palm forest in Europe in Elche (both in Alicante province). But, until just about a decade ago, except for the large quantities of bulk wines shipped to northern Europe, the only vinos that la Comunitat Valenciana was known for were a strange, but exotic and wonderful monastrell-based vino rancio from Alicante called Fondillón and a range of sweet dessert mistelas and late harvest wines made from luscious moscatel grapes from the vineyards of Valencia and Alicante. However in recent years, a new dynamic has emerged. Massive quantities of euros have poured into Valencia and the surrounding region, fueling an unprecedented building boom. Valencia recently completed the multibillion dollar La Cuitat des Arts y Ciencies (City of Arts and Sciences), Europe’s largest and most advanced such cultural-leisure complex, and Valencia was host in 2007 to the world’s most prestigious yacht race, the 32nd America’s CupThis coming of age for one of Spain’s most historically rich regions has spawned a cultural renaissance (the riverbed of the diverted Río Turia is home to La Cuitat des Arts y Ciencies and is now dubbed the Río CulTuria). There is a growing awareness that Valencian cuisine is among the country’s most distinguished. Many new-wave wines from Valencia’s three denominaciones de origen (D.O.’s)—Alicante, Utiel-Requena and Valencia—are emerging as serious quality contenders. (The importance of wine here is underscored by Verema.com, a locally based wine website with a global following that sponsors a high-quality wine conference in Valencia every year.) The influx of money coming into the Comunitat Valenciana has also provided the essential platform to support an important modern cuisine movement. Led by Paco Torreblanca, one of the world’s greatest desserts confectioners, several of Spain’s best cocina moderna stars including Raúl Aleixandre (Ca Sento, Valencia), Quique Dacosta (El Poblet, Denia), María José San Román (Monastrell, Alicante), Mari Carmen Velez (La Sirena, Petrer) and several others. When adding in Valencia’s rewarding traditional cuisine restaurants, the result has been attention for Valencian wines.
Heretofore, only dedicated wine aficionados were aware that this warm Mediterranean region—whose higher elevation inland vineyards usually do not draw the attention of those flocking to the popular beaches of the Costa Blanca—encompasses one of Spain’s largest wine producing regions. The vines, which mainly grow on land that rises rapidly inland from the coast, reach significant elevations, meaning cooler nighttime temperatures to ameliorate the effects of the daytime Mediterranean heat on the grapes. To understand why the Valencian community is emerging as an area with aspirations to produce quality wines requires some historical context. As recently as twenty years ago, the only wines most wine drinkers outside Spain knew were sherries, table wines from La Rioja, Penedès, and the legendary Vega Sicilia. And, until the turn of this century, most of the wines from the three Valenciana D.O.’s were rustic, powerful high volume wines produced for blending or for chain store and state monopoly sales in northern Europe. But, in the late 1980s and 1990s, wine regions such as the Ribera del Duero, Navarra, Priorat, Rueda, Toro, Rías Baíxas Albariño, and single vineyard wines from La Rioja all emerged as worthy of serious consideration by international wine connoisseurs. On the heels of those successes and in an epoch with a growing international acceptance of dark, ripe rich, higher octane, new oak-aged wines, producers in the warm country areas of Spain, especially in the Levante (Valencia and Murcia), Cataluña, and La Mancha, saw a promising opportunity.
In recent years it has become obvious that with proper vineyard and water management, modern production facilities, and savvy winemakers, a wine fitting the modern international profile can be made just about any place in Spain’s warmer areas. Since Spain has more land planted in vineyards than any other country, if the warm country areas such as Australia, South America, South Africa and, indeed, California’s Napa Valley, could produce wines that drew positive, sometimes rave international reviews, why couldn’t similar wines aimed at the new world wine order palate be made in areas such as the Comunitat Valenciana?
On more than half a dozen trips since 2003 to La Comunitat Valenciana’s seldom visited D.O.’s, I found a region undergoing dynamic change that happily included quantum leaps in quality over the passage of just a few years. Most wineries are now fully modernized and, though many are producing large quantities of technically correct, mass market table wine, while several other producers still working their way through the winemaking and viticultural learning curve are producing reasonably priced, good, very palatable wines. I also encountered a number of noteworthy producers of both table and dessert wines and a few youth-driven new wineries deserving serious attention.
Established Valencian producers have been rapidly upgrading their winemaking facilities and technology as successful professionals and entrepreneurs, like those in Napa and Sonoma in earlier decades, are building new wineries. Many producers draw on high-quality fruit from unirrigated old vines vineyards, many others have planted new vineyards, often with the foreign varieties such as cabernet sauvignon, merlot and syrah trained on wires and equipped with drip irrigation systems.
Successful producers from other parts of Spain, such as Juan Carlos López de la Calle, producer of La Rioja’s powerhouse Artadi wines (Grandes Añadas, El Pisón); Galicia’s Agro de Bazán (Gran Bazán Rías Baixas Albariño); and peripatetic winemaker Telmo Rodríguez, originally from Rioja’s Remelluri estate; are now making red wines in Utiel-Requena and Alicante. Consulting enologists such Sara Pérez of Priorat’s Clos Martinet coached fledgling wineries such as Valencia’s promising Celler de Roure. American
importers such as Stephen Metzler of Classical Wines (Seattle, Washington), who recognized the quality of Alicante’s dessert wines early on and begin representing Felipe Gútierrez de la Vega’s Casta Diva some two decades ago, and others like Eric Solomon of European Cellars realized that the region’s concentrated wines are no more powerful than average Napa Valley reds, have made serious commitments in the region.
Historically, the best wines of the Valencian region were semisweet to sweet vinos rancios (wines made purposely in oxidative environment) and mistelas (fresh grape must whose fermentation is cut short by the addition of alcohol). Such wines have been made here for centuries—probably since before the epoch of the Moors, among whom there were plenty of Koran-defying imbibers (Spanish Arabic poetry celebrated the virtues of wine and other beverages containing al-quol, an import from the Islamic world). But, the major thrust of La Comunitat Valenciana’s modern producers in the Alicante, Valencia and Utiel-Requena D.O.’s is the production of red wines, including 100 percent varietal red wines and blends of the native Valencian red varieties monastrell (mourvedre), bobal, and garnacha (usually old vines); Spain’s most important red wine variety, tempranillo; and the foreign grapes cabernet sauvignon, merlot, and, very promising for this warm region, high quality syrah, the great grape of France’s Rhone Valley. They are also producing fresher, cold-fermented white wines from the traditional meserguera, macabeo (viura) and moscatel romano varieties and some chardonnays. Worth seeking out are the fresh, bright, quaffable rosados, based on the little-known local bobal grape, produced by several Utiel-Requena bodegas.
Many bodegas in Valencia and Alicante still pay homage to the region’s historical wines, producing those luscious, fruity moscateles, mostly in much brighter, fresher modernized versions. And Alicante producers, led by such producers as Salvador Poveda and Felipe Gutierrez de la Vega have rescued one of the world’s greatest vinos generosos from extinction, the magnificent Fondilló, made from native monastrell grapes.
Once again, an area in Spain not previously known for quality wines has shown great potential. I came away from my trips with the feeling that the Comunitat Valenciana, an area rich in Moorish heritage; world famous for its oranges, almonds, date palms and paellas; home the great cities of Valencia and Alicante and the beach playgrounds of its coast; the famous Valencian Fallas Fiestas; now the great cultural City of Arts and Sciences; and home port of the America’s Cup, could soon become an area known for wines, which are showing a marked improvement with every passing year.
To read more articles by Gerry Dawes, see Gerry Dawes’ Spain
Posted by Jane Gregg 0 Comments
Next entry: Traveling Alone
Previous entry: Adrià Wins Chef of the Year Award from the Culinary Institute of America
