Spain is one of the privileged countries where it is possible to have a good wine for little money. This is demonstrated by this selection of Comer La Vanguardia's 2023 wine guide, with a list of bottles that not only stand out for their price, but also for their quality. Options that could cost more and luckily for wine lovers, the price does not exceed 10 euros.
Bodegas Madrid Romero are in the Carche Valley, in the Jumilla Protected Natural Area, with panoramic views over its vineyards at an altitude of 1,300 meters
It is a modern winery with straight and minimalist lines combined with the classicism of Salamanca river stone and natural marble, a privileged and charming place. Here the colors of the vineyard are capable of dwarfing us when they are shown in all their rotundity.
Rosana, queens of the cups, is the current generation at the helm of the winery, journalist and oenologist. She has a great entrepreneurial spirit, she is constant and she managed to make her life project come true. Today it is a reference winery in the DO Jumilla, always with great respect for the past, maintaining deeply rooted traditions and seeking to express its origin through each bottle.
When looking for great wines, I always look for value for money and for the wine to make me happy. This wine first caught my attention because of the elegance of the bottle. The 3 Calas project includes a white, a rosé and a red, which represent the three family generations. White is the elegance identified in the person of Mercedes Romero, the first generation of the family.
Elegant, full-bodied and aromatic, designed to be eaten young. It is a sauvignon blanc with herbaceous notes, tropical fruit and pink grapefruit. Ideal to enjoy with the arrival of good weather, with appetizers, salads and light pasta.
During the visit to the winery you can also enjoy local products in its restaurant. And so on to infinity.
The Manchuela exists! Straddling the plateau and the Levantine lands, it inherits the best of both territories. From the Mediterranean it receives the bobal. Here, in the highlands of Cuenca, the Bobal variety jumps from a scene of warm wines and very ripe fruit to a juicy, light, crunchy and very expressive Clos Lojén. And it is that the cold winters of La Manchuela are followed by wonderfully mild summers, cooled by humid breezes coming from the Mediterranean. Thus, the bobal grows serene and happy, giving us its freshest expression.
Wineries, like people, should be followed and not judged by a single fact or any wine. I have been following the trajectory of Juan Antonio Ponce and his family winery for years. I like everything about this guy that he abandoned a career in Rioja Alavesa with Telmo Rodríguez to focus on his origins. All his wines are honest, true, essential and at an excellent price. Luis Gutiérrez said when referring to this wine in his tastings for The Wine Advocate (the most influential publication in the world of wine) that Clos Lojén was much more serious than his price would suggest.
Clos Lojén comes from thirty-year-old vineyards from seven different plots, worked with traditional procedures and according to biodynamic practices. Only autochthonous yeast provided by the grape itself, minimal intervention in the winery, without filtering or clarifying, and all the effort of the Ponce family to narrate in their wine the generational relationship with this land.
Ànima Nua Cor Viu is the range of ecological wines that Cellers Domenys produces in its cellar in Rocafort de Queralt with DO Conca de Barbera. There are two wines, white and red, that are made exclusively from their organically certified vineyards.
The red comes from vines that are 20-35 years old on clayey soils that provide freshness, located at an altitude of 450 meters and surrounded by mountains, which also provide freshness due to the thermal contrast between day and night. The elaboration also seeks freshness, in stainless steel tanks where it remains until bottling, in contact with its own lees, without any passage through wood, to give all the prominence to the freshness of the fruity expression.
It is the type of red that many consumers are looking for, softer, lighter and with a lower alcohol content. In this case 13°, far from those stout and heavy reds with more than 15° alcohol. The trepat variety brings lightness, softens and decompresses the ull de llebre variety, as Tempranillo is known in Catalonia. At sight it is already light, purple-red color with medium layer, somewhat translucent. Soft and light on the palate, but with good fruit expression. Cherries, currants and berries, with notes of black licorice from Tempranillo and spices from Trepat. In addition, it represents a great social and territorial project. Cellers Domenys is the union of seven historic cooperatives that add up to 500 members and 2,500 cultivated hectares, with the production of wines, oils, nuts and other local products.
The new classic from Rioja. One of the great success stories of Riojan wine in recent years. Excellent value for money, with a retro aesthetic that gives it a classic air and at the same time modern and groundbreaking. Qualified as Best Value, Best Buy Rioja and best buy in many wine guides and competitions.
Riojan without contemplation. Tempranillo, Garnacha and Graciano from old vines on the terraces of the Ebro River, in the Sonsierra area. Aged for 18 months in French, American and Eastern European oak barrels. 2019 vintage of healthy and good quality grapes, with little rainfall that arrived on the right days. Kind and round.
Red fruits, notes of licorice typical of Tempranillo and vanilla, cocoa and balsamic wrappers. For any time and for all audiences. Of course, the star wine of its Vintae Wine Fest. Because there are two things that they are very good at, one is making wine and the other is organizing parties. The Vintae Wine Fest is the mother of all parties.
It has been held for 18 years and this year the members of the jury have awarded them the Special Mention of the Best Of Wine Tourism Bilbao-Rioja 2023 awards. There were three days of music, gastronomy, partying, good vibes and lots of wine, this year under the Wine Circus theme. They set up the craziest and most danceable circus ever known, bigger than the castle of San Vicente, with trapeze artists, clowns, acrobats, jugglers, strongmen and bearded women. It is a first class party, which brings freshness, youth, fun and a lot of flirting to the world of wine.
"Every sunset brings the promise of a new dawn" (Ralph Waldo Emerson). Light is so important in summer, good weather allows you to taste life in sips, as if it were a good wine. Chromatically, this type of colour, luminous, subtle, sensual and original, triumphs with this enigmatic mutation of xarel·lo vermell, an ancestral variety from Penedès.
Its clusters are spherical, of an intense pink color and its skin is thicker than that of the normal xarel·lo. It is also called cartoixà or pansa rosada and is almost in danger of extinction. This wine is made from old, low-yield vines, about 8,000 bottles. Harvested by hand at the beginning of October, macerated for seven hours with its skins to obtain its unique transparent salmon color with orange and pink reflections. Fermented in stainless steel, with 70 days with their mothers in suspension, which give it structure and creaminess.
The 2021 harvest was very dry, but fresh. Slow ripening and highly concentrated bunches, with more volume and structure. Aromas of red fruits and pineapple, fresh and fruity, friendly and silky.
Its geography between the sea and the Montserrat mountain allows them to produce this highly elegant rosé. A family rooted in Penedès that makes Mediterranean wines with vegan and organic certification. Alex Torelló, technical and viticulture director, and Gemma Torelló, lawyer and company administrator, are a benchmark for family cava companies that are making still wines with personality. Like this rosé so easy to drink, but so difficult to make.
Malum Peccati refers us to original sin. The creators of Veintemillas understood the concept of Vinyes de Lilith very well, so they played with the wrong translation of the Bible. In Genesis, "God tells Adam and Eve that they should not eat the fruit of the tree of good and evil." The term mal was translated into Latin as malum, which means apple. They loved this error of biblical proportions to develop the concept, the naming and the packaging.
Marta Vallés is an entrepreneur who at the age of 28 launched her own Gastro Wine Bar Restaurant concept. She studied Business Administration and Management, as her father wanted, but she always wanted to be an artist, so she studied acting in Madrid. She has now set up her own stage. Vinyes de Lilith is a restaurant made her way. Its success is simply due to word of mouth. Due to its own food intolerances, it offers healthy food, organic and local garden and farm products, made in a simple and healthy way, without processing, additives, gluten, sugars, or refined flours.
There is also a lot of gender claims. According to the Hebrew myth, Lilith was the first wife of Adam. When they made love she wanted to get on top of her and he wouldn't let her. She protested, she was not heard and she decided to leave Eden. She was the first woman to claim his rights and the first to leave a man. She discovered a new paradise, that of freedom. And she also wanted her own wines, like this Malum Peccati, sauvignon blanc and muscat, fruity, aromatic and floral.
