Olivastro 2008 — First Club de Enófilos de Valencia tasting of 2010

The Club de Enófilos takes its holidays, as well as its wine, seriously. The hardier members braved the cold on 12 January for our first tasting since 17 December. For once I was on time and managed to get a decent seat to be able to hear the speaker in the fine but echoing hall of the HQ of Denominación de Origen Valencia (hooray, the new website is finally up and running). The single wine we tasted was Olivastro 2008, actually from DO Utiel-Requena, a monovarietal of the DO’s signature grape — Bobal. The Bobal has its admirers (check out Zev Robinson‘s documentary “La Bobal and other stories about wine“) and detractors, and I am very much a fan. I also maintain that in addition to the chunky, chewy red wines that it is known for, the grape has much more to offer — the brilliant and rather neglected rosados for a start.

This Olivastro 2008 (it means oleaster and was how a particular bit of the family vineyards was referred to) showed us another side of the Bobal. It is produced by the just-established family winery, Bodega y Viñedos Carres (website forthcoming), and is the first vintage from José Luis Torres Carpio, another of the young winemakers that the Club does such a good job of bringing to our attention. The wine is made from grapes from the small vineyard tended by his father and grandfather before him (and his grandfather’s father and grandfather before that) in a corner of Requena with the wonderful name Casas de Eufemia (some 160 inhabitants).

What this amounts to is that José Luis has not only known these vineyards since he was a toddler, he has also absorbed the knowledge of his forebears. Though trained as a winemaker, of course, it was wonderful to hear him talking about how he combines his training with what these fifty-year old vines “say” to him. He uses no fertilizers nor does he irrigate. He uses no yeasts in the wine beyond those that appear naturally. He is drawn to biodynamic and organic ideas, but as yet hasn’t decided whether he wants to align himself formally with those practices and go for certification.

In an expression of his love for the Bobal, he has decided to make a wine that maximizes the essence of the grape through carbonic maceration. Whole, hand-picked grapes are fermented in a dry ice environment before the lightest of pressings.

The wine rests in containers before being passed into oak casks. As before, José Luis doesn’t want to be constrained and categorized by the norms of the Denominación de Origen, so he doesn’t identify the wines as “crianza” on the label, though they spend long enough in oak to qualify, some nine months in the case of this first vintage.

The result is a wine that combines the immediate brightness of flavour and fruit (strawberries with, I thought, a touch of plum and that pleasanter-than-it-sounds hint of bubble-gum I often find in carbonic maceration wines), with the greater substance offered by the Bobal as compared to the classic carbonic maceration Gamays of Beaujolais. There is then the additional complexity from the wood ageing. Add in the Bobal’s famously intense colour, and there is a lot to this package. This is a carbonic maceration wine with knobs on, a wine that is not made to fade away after its first spring, as is often the case with this method.

Finally, the women of the club made a particular point of saying how much they liked the artwork on the label. I must buy a bottle and get a photo for this page, which shouldn’t be too painful at around 8 euros. There is something really enjoyable about being introduced to a brand new wine, especially one made with such craft and devotion. I wish this new bodega and its winemaker all the very best.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at 12:29 and is filed under Club de Enófilos, General.