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Spain in the News |
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From Wine & Spirits: June, 2006 "The Oldest Vines in Spain?"Someone forgot to tell Spain’s winegrowers about this – as much as one-third of this country’s vineyard area, at 2.6 million acres the largest in the world, is still thought to be growing on ungrafted vines! Of course, most of that land is covered with mediocre airén grapes in La Mancha – the heat resistant vine that produces neutral white grapes most often distilled into spirits. But there are more interesting ungrafted vines still alive in Spain, such as the older Monastrell (mourvèdre/mataro) vines in Murcia province, where phylloxera is endemic but advances slowly due to the sandy components in the soil; or the ones in the Eguren brothers’ 145-year-old Tempranillo vineyard in Toro, from which they source their powerful Termanthia; or the cluster of old Verdejo vines around the village of Nieva, in the Rueda appellation. But mostly, the finest Spanish haven for ungrafted vines lies in the Salnés valley, which is part of the Rías Baixas appellation on the Galician coast of northwest Spain. There have never been grafted vines there – so sandy are the soils that phylloxera’s progression is impossible. Prctically every inch of vineyard in Saléns (a total of 3,600 acres) is planted to the albariño grape, which makes golden, luscious, apricot-scented wines with a fine streak of acidity. None of the vines are older than those that surround Gerardo Méndez’s old stone house at Meaño. By all accounts they are at least 200 years old. Méndez, no in his early 50s, began making wine from the fmily’s small estate (now 12 acres, newer vineyards included) in 1973. “When we had no idea how to make clean and stable wines,” he says. The winery is right in his house, and he named it Do Ferreiro, “the blacksmith’s winery,” to honor his father, Meaño’s erstwhile blacksmith. From the start, Gerardo knew that the cepas vellas were special. These five acres of old vines were as thick and gnarled as old oak trees, and quite high because they are trained as six- to seven-foot-high pergolas. He has always harvested them separately, and kept the wine separate from the rest of his excellent, “regular” albariño. The Do Ferreiro Cepas Vellas has an aromatic and flavor intensity that very few other albariños can match. When asked about the reasons, Gerardo simply points to his vines: “The grapes are smaller, but they ripen well, and they have great concentration. They have been just as good for a long time. The vines are all different, and every single one has to be pruned differently. My grandmother, who died at the age of ninety-eight, told me that her own grandmother had known them as fully grown wines.” |
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