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Make room on your table this Christmas for Spanish flavours without giving up your turkey, cranberry sauce or mince pies. Many Spanish wines - both classical and frightfully contemporary - can happily accompany your traditional Christmas fare, as well as reveal unknown and enthralling flavours.
TodoVino have selected cavas, whites, reds and dessert wines with Christmas in mind. We believe we can offer the wine lover not just familiar flavours, but also original and in some cases unknown sensations.
At this special time of year, in which wine is a gift, a surprise or a way of saying welcome, we've aimed to prepare a connoisseur's list to suit all budgets. The dominant group, as befits Spain, is red wine, but we have interesting, subtle options for cavas, whites and dessert wines which in some cases are remarkable quality and unsettling rarity.
Cava is not just for toasting
Bubbles are afforded a place of honour in most Christmas celebrations, though the image of Spanish cava is often associated with cheap and cheerful wines that offer little in the way of glamour. We offer two cavas made by highly respected winemakers who may well contribute to changing this perception permanently.
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Agustí Torelló
Mata Gran Reserva Brut Nature (Cava)
Varieties: macabeo, xarel.lo, parellada
This sparkling gem is from one of the most reliable and consistent
cava-makers. It's fine, fruity and delicately carbonated. It's a
well-balanced offering whose virtues stretch all the way to the
price. Its fruity character and skilful ageing suggest consumption
beyond a simple aperitif to accompany the lighter dishes on the
menu.
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Spain's "other" whites
Our selection of whites is designed to warm up the chilly winter evenings with rich, rounded, oak-aged wines that go well with roast potatoes, sauces and white meats. They also offer a surprising vision of what Spanish wine is capable of offering. We've put the fragrant, summery albariños and verdejos aside to concentrate more on subtler, more complex whites, made with native Spanish varieties and closely reflecting their place of origin or the idiosyncrasy of their producer.
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Allende Fermentado en Barrica
2000 Blanco, Finca Allende (Rioja)
Varieties: 60% viura, 40% malvasía
This is one of Rioja's most personal white wines, from one of the
region's most iconoclastic bodegas, famous for its irresistible
reds (Allende, Calvario, Aurus). The Allende Blanco is seeking out
the roots of the region's traditional whites, but it's fermented
in French oak and expresses the arresting qualities of malvasía.
Complex, seductive and unctuous, it also has great ageing potential
in bottle.
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Reds: the jewel in the crown
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Corpus del Muni 2003, Bodegas
del Muni (VT Castilla)
Varieties: 76% tempranillo, 18%
syrah, 6% garnacha (grenache)
This is a young winery consistently offering good value wines. The 2003 is an intensely fragrant, fruity wine displaying elegant complexity. It’s a chewy, well-balanced red harmoniously intergrating tempranillo with French and American oak.
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Abadía Retuerta Rívola
2002, Abadía Retuerta (VT Castilla y León)
Varieties: 60% tempranillo, 40% cabernet sauvignon
An excellent everyday wine showing this bodega's excellent capabilities,
and a fine example of a tempranillo-cabernet symbiosis. It's complex
and well-structured, contemporary and rich in nuances and flavours.
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Dido 2003, Venus La Universal
(Montsant)
Varieties: 40% merlot, 30% cabernet sauvignon,
30% garnacha (grenache)
Spain's most famous flying winemaker, Sara Pérez of Mas Martinet,
has consolidated her contribution to the Montsant D.O. with this
wine. It's the winery's second vintage: powerful, elegant and unctuous
with a tannic expression that's both noble and refined.
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Let's continue with other good value reds from more established regions.
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Vallobera Crianza 2001, Bodegas
San Pedro (Rioja)
Varieties: 95% tempranillo
One of our favourite crianza wines, and one of Rioja's best values.
Its profile is classical with a subtle modern streak, showing rich,
juicy fruit as the more traditional Rioja oak.
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Ramón Bilbao Edición
Limitada Crianza 2001, Ramón Bilbao (Rioja)
Varieties: 100% tempranillo
The best vintage to date for a wine which continually reinterprets
the Rioja tradition into a wine in the classical style but with
good body and concentration. There are only 97,500 bottles of a
very well-made wine which will evolve well in bottle and is exceptionally
priced.
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Tiempo Briego 2002, Bodegas
Briego (Ribera del Duero)
Varieties: 100% tinto fino (tempranillo)
The best value wine from this bodega, made entirely from tempranillo
grapes from its tiny La Solana vineyard. A modern, pleasantly fuity,
minty wine, with great character, harmony and depth, perfectly integrating
French and American oak.
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Allende 2001, Finca Allende
(Rioja)
Varieties: 100% tempranillo
Allende is a truly splendid Rioja made by one of the region's most
innovative and consistent winemakers: Miguel Ángel de Gregorio,
the author of the highly sought-after Aurus and Calvario. A "new
wave" Rioja - serious, elegant and powerful, exquisitely combining
fruit and oak.
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Valenciso Reserva 2000, Cía.
Bodeguera Valenciso (Rioja)
Varieties: 100% tempranillo
The team behind this wine, Luis Valentín and Carmen Enciso,
is from a classical Rioja bodega, Palacio. They've put a significant
effort into their new project: an exhaustive grape selection, the
finest oak for ageing and a competitive pricing policy. It's got
a heady aromatic mix of toasted spices and a rich palate of fruit,
coffee, toffee and oak.
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Imperial Reserva 1999, CVNE
(Rioja)
Varieties: 85% tempranillo, 10% garnacha
(grenache), 5% mazuelo
This is a well-established brand in the UK - in fact, it was created
for this market - and a classic amongst classic Rioja brands. This
vintage reinforces the nobility of the lineage with complexity and
depth. The most elegant, concentrated and expressive Imperial vintage
to date.
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If you were thinking of something more special and want to bring one of the true greats to the table - which also means being prepared to pay a premium price - we have three utterly captivating wines to offer: Spain's most mythical wine, a startling new wave Rioja, and the greatest wine D.O. Toro has yet produced.
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Vega Sicilia Único Gran
Reserva 1991, Vega Sicilia
(Ribera del Duero)
Varieties: 80% tinto fino (tempranillo),
13% cabernet sauvignon, 2% merlot
Vega Sicilia is released only after a minimum of 10 years' ageing
in barrel and bottle, ensuring its complexity. It's only made when
the vintage is satisfactory. The 1991 is famously elegant and pure.
It is Ribera essence all over: vanilla, cherry, cinnamon, tobacco.
It's long, immensely expressive and wonderfully captivating. No
one ever forgets a Vega Sicilia.
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Artadi Pagos Viejos 2000, Artadi
(Rioja)
Varieties: 98% tempranillo, 2% other varieties
Artadi is one of the few bodegas to have transformed the entire
profile of Rioja as a region. Its most famous labels are Viña
el Pisón, Grandes Añadas and Pagos Viejos. This Pagos
Viejos comes from a selection of the best grapes from the oldest
vines to make a multi-layered, dense, rounded wine with richly expressive
aromas of forest fruits, tobacco and leather.
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Termanthia 2002, Numanthia-Termes
(Toro)
Varieties: 100% tinta de Toro (tempranillo)
Now in its second vintage, this is now firmly on the map as one
of Spain's truly great modern wines. If the demand for its "little"
sister Numanthia hasn't been a worldwide phenomenon of quite baffling
intensity, the bodega is now producing an even rarer wine of quite
astounding power. It comes from extremely low yielding 19th Century
vines, and possesses an overwhelming aromatic spectrum of liquorice
and vanilla and a depth to the palate that is rich in chocolate,
toasted coffee and brambly fruit. This is a truly masterful effort.
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New dessert wines for your Christmas pudding
It's quite possible that the UK is one of the world's most knowledgeable countries when it comes to sherries, both sweet and dry. There is little more we can impart to a British audience about oloroso, cream or the more exclusive Pedro Ximénez. But it may be worth sharing a little knowledge about the new white and red dessert wines which in the last decade have become the true stars of the Spanish table at the end of a meal. The queen of these wines comes from the moscatel (muscadet) variety, having been developed to express its freshness, or using techniques to explore the excellent expressive potential of noble rot. From sunny Jumilla we have a sweet monastrell which is dense and syrupy and which may well remind some wine lovers of port.
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Castaño Monastrell Dulce
1998, Bodegas Castaño (Yecla)
Varieties: 100% monastrell (mourvedre)
Bodegas Castaño is one of Spain's best makers of monastrell-based
wines, widely respected and especially desired for their great value.
This sweet wine is a highly original alternative to more conventional
accompaniments to dessert, displaying the more approachable facets
of a monastrell variety growing on old vines in a very arid,
dry environment. It's a silky, expansive wine with just the right
level of acidity to bring freshness to the palate.
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Chivite Colección 125
Vendimia Tardía 2002 Blanco Dulce, Bodegas Julián
Chivite (Navarra)
Varieties: 100% moscatel de grano menudo
One of Spain's greatest sweet wines, made in Navarra by the Chivite
family using noble rot, which develops with great difficulty in
Spain. Its limited production and high price are more than amply
compensated by considerable aromatic complexity and concentration
in an especially delicate vintage. This is a remarkable wine which
won't disappoint even the most demanding taster.
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