RSS FeedCeller del Roure is one of the bodegas that created a buzz about Valencian wine over the last decade. The two red wines produced by the bodega since bringing its first wines to market in 2000, Les Alcusses and Maduresa, had critics swooning and helped the region present itself as more than a source of high colour and high alcohol bulk wines.
At the Club de Enófilos meeting of 26 October, we were given an insight into the latest developments at the bodega.
Underground gallery with inbuilt tinajas, Celler del Roure
The winery and owner-winemaker Pablo Calatayud have continued to develop and mature, moving from cramped beginnings in a warehouse to the more spacious surroundings of an old bodega where wine had been made from at least the early sixteenth century, and probably a lot earlier, until the interruption of the Spanish Civil War. This new (old) bodega had another surprise, a series of underground galleries complete with 97 tinajas (earthenware jars) mentioned in a document dating from the early seventeenth century.
Spurred on by the keen enthusiasm of Pablo’s father, the bodega has begun to experiment with making wine in the clay tinajas. After all, it’s how it was done for hundred of years until oak casks swept all before them in the nineteenth century.
The experiment began in November 2009 with Celler del Roure’s first white wine. They bought some 40,000 kilos of Chardonnay and began to make wine in a handful of tinajas, using blocks of ice to maintain coolness during fermentation. It so happens that Pablo got married in 2010, and he was persuaded to include this white wine in the wedding celebrations after only four months in the vessels, and it was a hit.
There are only some 4,000 bottles of this wine , and in honour of its fledgling condition it has been named “Cullerot” (tadpole in Valencian). It is a light gold wine, clean and appley, straightforward in style yet full and, of course, with a refreshing absence of oak.
- Image via Wikipedia
We tasted Les Alcusses 2007 and Maduresa 2006, both fine wines, though the cedar, spice and power of the grander Maduresa rather overshadowed its junior partner when drunk side by side. As I said earlier, the bodega is always tinkering. This 2007 is the first vintage of Les Alcusses to include no Tempranillo in its blend. From 2009 the red wines will include some tinaja-made wine in the blend. There’s plenty of scope, as half of the earthenware vessels take 2,400 litres and the other half 900 litres.
Les Alcusses is named after Bastida de les Alcusses, the historic Iberian settlement near Celler del Roure where archaeologists have found grape seeds and wine sediment in vessels from around 2,400 years ago. Talk about recovering tradition.
