One Of The Greatest Wine Producers In Spain Has Set Firm Roots In Tokaj, Hungary

Over the previous few years, one of many best wine producers in Spain, many would argue one of many best on the planet, Vega Sicilia, has began to launch their dry Furmint wines from Tokaj, Hungary, onto the market. In true Vega fashion, they purchased a Tokaj property within the 1993 but they’ve frequently invested time and again, patiently ready a long time till they may ideally categorical the terroir and varietal expression of a dry Furmint wine. Tokaj is principally recognized for his or her Tokaji aszú candy wines which have an excruciating choice strategy of choosing berry by berry within the vineyards but it surely was vital for Vega Sicilia to indicate the brilliance of the place past their legendary candy wine.   

Vega Sicilia

Bodegas Vega Sicilia was based in 1864 by Don Eloy Lecanda y Chaves, a Spanish winemaker skilled in Bordeaux who introduced Bordeaux grape varieties again to Ribera del Duero in Spain. Eloy Lecanda is taken into account Vega Sicilia’s first visionary, in response to Vega’s technical director Gonzalo Iturriaga, and its second visionary is undoubtedly Pablo Álvarez. The Álvarez Household, which owns the Eulen Group, a market chief in offering cleansing, safety and different normal providers to corporations, bought Vega Sicilia in 1982. Though it’s a household ardour venture, Pablo Álvarez has been the one main the way in which with stopping the usage of herbicides and chemical compounds within the vineyards within the mid-80s when the opposite wine producers thought he was loopy to do such a factor. But Pablo didn’t cease simply there as their most wanted icon wine Único just isn’t made in lesser years therefore slicing into income to maintain the bar for excellence excessive.

However Pablo didn’t turn out to be fully happy with the discontinuation of herbicides. In 1998 he planted 50,000 cork oak timber so in the future, maybe in 50 or 60 years, they may make their very own corks however for now they hold the best requirements for high quality management with their closures. Each resolution Pablo makes at all times considers the inspiration he’s leaving for the subsequent era and Vega has already began making 1/3 of all of the oak barrels they use of their wineries in Spain, in a cooperage that they began on the property.

Pablo, having such a deal with the long run, has additionally introduced up considerations about local weather change and therefore why they’ve been experimenting with new clones of Tempranillo which can be extra proof against illness that may assist them to handle the acute weather conditions which can be turning into extra prevalent. And Vega has even gone as far as to run trials with non-Saccharomyces yeasts for his or her wine ferments as they discover it brings extra freshness and it’s definitely a uniquely pure strategy to handle local weather change as Saccharomyces cerevisiae are the standard species of yeasts used for fermenting wine.

They nonetheless use a small proportion of Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot, round 5-6%, of their Único and Valbuena 5° Reserva respectively regardless of indigenous varieties turning into trendier as they’ve outdated vines of the Cabernet and Merlot which have turn out to be native varieties in their very own proper and they’re a giant a part of the legacy of Bodegas Vega Sicilia.

Gonzalo Iturriaga, technical director, famous that Pablo Álvarez at all times says, “We like evolution not revolution.” As he won’t ever simply leap on a pattern however slightly he’ll keep true to the soul of Vega Sicilia, and different wineries, whereas taking the time to experiment so his crew can carry that soul to the subsequent degree by first working trials for a number of years to see if certainly any change is a part of the true evolution of a wine.

Gonzalo Iturriaga

The present technical director, Gonzalo Iturriaga, may by no means think about being the place he’s now as it’s a dream job to have the ability to attempt to attain the next commonplace every day with every thing he wants whereas additionally assembly folks world wide who benefit from the wines he is part of making. “I began working for Vega Sicilia the two^nd of September 2015 and it was the second finest day of my life as the primary was my marriage to my spouse.”

However Gonzalo by no means even thought of working with wine as he grew up within the capital of Spain, in Madrid, and though he was learning engineering in agronomy, he didn’t assume wine was going to be a part of his future. But after college, he spent three months through the summer time at a vineyard in Rioja and he received actually into the work and the technical director at that vineyard helped him to enhance his data and to proceed his research in enology in Montpellier, France. He labored for a tiny producer in Ribera del Duero, in South West Spain, then for Bodegas Habla then when the financial disaster began in 2009 he ended up working for the winemaking tools provider Lamothe-Abiet the place he finally grew to become the export gross sales director.

Gonzalo famous with a beaming smile, “Then in 2015 in June, Pablo knocked on my door and requested me to hitch Vega and I used to be like ‘after all’ as a result of it’s a dream for a winemaker in Spain to work at Vega Sicilia.”

No Method, As a substitute A long time Of Exploring

However not solely does Gonzalo get to supervise one of many best wineries in Spain, he additionally will get to discover one in all Spain’s most vital grape varieties in varied areas all through the nation. There’s not solely the Vega Sicilia property vineyards in Ribera del Duero however for his or her Alión wines, they work with vineyards throughout Ribera del Duero. After which there may be their Pintia vineyard within the Toro wine area of Spain in addition to their newest Spanish venture, Macán in Rioja, which is a partnership with Benjamin de Rothschild. An enormous a part of the Vega philosophy is to search out not solely the perfect aromas and flavors of a specific place from a specific 12 months however that the expression of texture holds simply as excessive of a precedence. And though Tempranillo dominates most of the crimson wines, with most being 100%, the totally different wines are aged in vessels which can be suited to the vineyards: Vega Sicilia and Alión, in Ribera del Duero, are aged in wood vats and concrete respectively however in Pintia, in Toro, they’re working with amphorae (vessels manufactured from clay) and with Macán, in Rioja, they’re working with foudre (225 liter French oak barrels).

Gonzalo has been in a position to actually discover Tempranillo as a grape that has an affinity for expressing sense of place and the variations will be extraordinarily totally different with Vega Sicilia being greater and bolder because the extremes in temperature are so extreme that they must battle freezing temperatures throughout harvest time in comparison with Toro which has extra total finesse with preferrred weather conditions of heat, sunny climate throughout harvest. The grapes categorical what they went via and the Toro grapes present the great thing about a straightforward rising season versus Ribera del Duero grapes displaying how they’re survivors of climate that ought to have killed them and a part of the explanation why the wines are extraordinarily complicated and structured.

Regardless of Vega Sicilia making probably the most iconic effective wines on the planet, they don’t take without any consideration that it takes time to know a brand new wine space and so step-by-step they discover what the vineyards want and the way the vineyard can categorical these vineyards in one of the best ways. Gonzalo says that Pablo at all times tells him and his crew, “The primary wine needs to be the worst wine you make within the vineyard” and he continued that it takes about 10 to fifteen years to know all of the tiny issues that one must know to get to the place the place the wine must be. He mentioned that they’ve gotten there with their Pintia vineyard in Toro and that they simply began to get the place they wanted to be with their Macán vineyard within the North West of Rioja, close to the Cantabrian Mountains, with the 2019 classic.

Oremus

Each time Vega Sicilia invests in a venture they know that they must deeply imagine in that venture because it by no means escapes Pablo for one second that any vineyard is an extended dedication and isn’t for anybody who desires a fast turnaround. No different vineyard has examined Vega Sicilia’s dedication greater than their Oremus vineyard in Tokaj, Hungary.

Communism was abolished in Hungary on the finish of 1989 and with it their deal with making fortified wines, which was massively in style in Communist nations, dwindling with it. And so Hungary allowed outdoors traders, particularly from England and France, to buy wineries and vineyards to carry again the Tokaj wines to their unique glory… and one investor from Spain was allowed – the Álvarez Household. The candy wines of Tokaj have been loved by royalty going at the very least way back to the 1600s and regardless that Gonzalo says it has been a painstaking venture, as issues have gone so very slowly with a seemingly countless cycle of fixed investing, that when he tastes verticals with Pablo on the vineyard that return so far as the mid-1800s he’s blown away by the beautiful fantastic thing about the wines.

Each time Gonzalo visits Oremus in Tokaj he feels he’s transported to a different world as he explains, “There’s something mystical within the terroir there, the folks, the way in which they produce wine.” However he warns that the place is barely for many who have a long-term plan as a result of nothing good can come from somebody who is barely on the lookout for a fast revenue.

It might appear to be an oddity {that a} Spanish household recognized to supply one of many best wines of Spain would spend money on a vineyard in Hungary but it surely is smart when one begins to grasp that Pablo Álvarez is a visionary that sees the potential of a fantastic property and doesn’t shrink back for a venture that may take a long time to come back to fruition.

Their Oremus vineyards have been categorised as a “Primae Classis” in 1772 which will be equated to a primary development property (in Bordeaux). The volcanic soils of Oremus with the difficult winters the place the snow really protects the vines from the bitterly chilly winds that then swings to sweltering warmth in the summertime to then be topped off by the backbreaking work of choosing berry by berry for the Tokaji aszú candy wines through the autumn harvest has created challenges that Gonzalo may have by no means imagined. It’s grueling work and solely the heavenly juice that comes from the Tokaji aszú makes it price it.

In a approach it’s a reminder of the tough activity that Vega Sicilia took on with their vineyards in Ribera del Duero, which Vega helped placed on the map, and curiously sufficient, Tokaji aszú candy wine is a uncommon candy wine as not solely is it recognized for its fierce acidity that comes from the native Furmint grape selection but it surely has a particular textural part that’s definitely inline with Vega’s priorities. The Tokaji aszú wines are made by macerating the entire berries of extremely concentrated noble rot grapes affected by botrytis within the wine should over a span of a few days. So not solely does this white candy wine have complexity of taste however it’s texturally complicated in a approach that the majority different white candy wines don’t share.

These candy wines can’t be produced yearly and so Gonzalo has been working with their Oremus crew to make Furmint dry white wines that may stay as much as the fame of the candy wines in addition to the primary development vineyards that they bought. It is a gigantic uphill battle as Tokaj has traditionally centered on their candy wines with reference to reaching effective wine standing and so in some ways Gonzalo and Pablo must carve a path that hasn’t been created but.

Bringing Out Potential

Trying again at that younger man that simply graduated from faculty who thought that he was simply going to work within the vineyards in Rioja for enjoyable one summer time, earlier than he settled down right into a desk job within the massive metropolis of Madrid, one may have by no means imagined the life he had in retailer for him. That summer time wouldn’t solely open up the attractive world of wines that connects to folks dwelling everywhere in the world however he world be a part of constructing the long run for effective wines that features controlling each step of the wine making course of from the vineyards to creating the barrels to finally making the corks – taking the stability between sustainability and excellence to the subsequent degree. It will additionally embody the “mystic world” tucked away in Tokaj, Hungary, that made wines past his creativeness and moreover turning into a pioneer in expressing all sides of their grapes and terroir in types past their legendary candy wines.

However most of all that younger man may have by no means imagined assembly somebody like Pablo Álvarez, a person that makes the inconceivable doable and unlocks the potential for all that works for him. Gonzalo says that Pablo is at all times pushing him to do higher… to take it to a better high quality and in a approach Pablo Álvarez just isn’t solely saying to Gonzalo that there’s a lot extra to unlock with the vines however there may be much more to unlock inside Gonzalo himself; and therefore why it was the second best day of his life to work for Pablo as it could be the start of actually exploring what he was able to.

Vega Sicilia produces two dry white wines with their Oremus vineyard known as Mandolás, tasting observe beneath, and the one winery Petracs in addition to a late harvest candy wine and ranging ranges of sweetness of the well-known Tokaji aszú candy wines.

2018 Oremus, ‘Mandolás’, Tokaji Furmint Dry, Tokaj, Hungary: 100% Furmint. Intriguing nostril with a novel observe that I can solely describe as walnuts sautéing in sugar, salt and butter that had hints of anise seeds and honeysuckle with a mix of lemon custard and pineapple flavors on the palate that had a slicing acidity laced with a saline minerality.