Joe Canal's Travels to Spain - Part 1

Every Friday on the BottleBlog will feature a food-related article, wine pairing, or travelogue. Today, we'll travel with Wine Manager Mark Ricca and the team to Spain!

It was a Sunday evening flight that would take our group to Madrid to begin a tour of the wineries, winemakers and estates that are part of the importer Jorge Ordonez's "Fine Estates of Spain" portfolio. Four intrepid Joe Canal's employees and Peter Fairfax, our sales rep from Tempranillo Inc. (the company that sells Jorge's wines), met at Newark Liberty International Airport and started a trip that would cover the country of Spain, from end to end, in seven days.

The flight was much shorter than I had expected, lasting only six and a half hours. We touched down in Madrid on Monday morning and were met by Luiz, who would be our van driver for the entire week. Our bags went into the van and off we went to our first hotel, the Hotel Wellington in the city of Madrid. We had about an hour down time after we checked in and then we were off to lunch.

We would have lunch that day with the owner from Caves El Cep, Maite Esteve, and Kasia Romanska from Oro wines who represents El Cep. We met at a restaurant in Madrid called Santceloni and the seven of us were seated in private dinning room at a single table. Food started coming out and it was as much a feast for the eyes as the stomach. This was a seared filet of Scorpionfish over braised leeks.

We ate and talked our way through seven courses of exotically presented foods and seven wines, including four different sparkling wines from Marques de Gelida which is produced by El Cep. Cavas easily represents some of the best values in the sparkling wine market these days. Their quality to price ratio is amazing and a bounty for consumers like myself who love bubbles! Stylistically they are very similar to Champagne, exhibiting citrus, almond, yeast, and mineral flavors. These cavas showed very well as did an Albarino called "La Cana" and two reds from the Can Blau property in the D.O. Montsant. Montsant is a region that is shaped like a doughnut and circles the better known Priorat region in eastern Spain. Can Blau is a proprietary blend of Carignan, Syrah, and Grenache.

Tasting notes on 2008 Can Blau D.O. Montsant:
Color: Dark ruby, clean appearance, color consistent to the rim.
Nose: Black fruits, cracked stone, herbs.
Palate: Blackberry fruits, stoney mineral notes, medium acidity, medium + tannins, long black fruit finish.

The wine paired very well with this dual presentation of pork:




We concluded lunch and found ourselves with a couple hours to knock around Madrid. We walked briskly around the city, working off the enormous lunch we'd just consumed. The architecture of the city is a breathtaking mix of new and old. Ongoing construction taking place next to buildings from a pre-war era was a common sight. We walked until we came to a plaza where we saw many of the locals taking a late lunch or a beer/coffee break. By chance we ran into a familiar face who had apparently been enjoying much of the good life in Madrid.

Pete Fairfax, meet Peter Parker, a.k.a., well... you know who. That night we were to dine at Restaurant Sergio Arola and taste through wines from Bodegas Atteca and Bodegas Avanthia also represented by Oro Wines.

Let me step aside here to point out that there were two very distinct styles of food presentation that we were exposed to at most of our meals. One was the whimsical and very technically advanced style that had been pioneered by the renown Spanish chef, Ferran Adria. We were served food that appeared to be something other than what it really was, all set out in a very playful presentation. On the other hand, there were bountiful meals presented family style with execution just as flawless in the results, but more straightforward in appearance. Restaurant Sergio Arola was definitely in the former camp!

All Spanish meals begin with tapas: small dishes that come even before the appetizer in more formal meals, meant to whet the appetite. At this meal we were served several different interpretations of traditional Spanish foods. The wines began with a white from the Valdeorras D.O. or Denominacion de Origen, called Godello (the name of the grape as well as the wine) from a producer named Avanthia. Crisp, dry, and minerally, with a light citrus note, the wine worked very well with this spin on the traditional sandwich of fried squid with a lemon mayonnaise.
Fried squid was placed in a delicate crisp wafer and sauced with a light citrus mayonnaise. An interpretation of a traditional braised garlic dish that would be served with tart cherries came out as a spoon garlic "foam" with tiny cherry caviar droplets. The meal continued through six more courses include such delicacies as Sea Cucumber, and wild Pigeon with wines to match.

My WOTN (wine of the night) was Avanthia Mencia, a red from the D.O. Valdeorras.

Tasting notes on Avanthia Mencia:
Color: Dark ruby, clean, color consistent to the rim of the glass.
Nose: Violets, red and black fruits, mineral like the smell of cracked stone
Palate: Repeats of the black and red fruit flavors, think blackberry with less sweetness than the fruit, dry minerality like licking a rock, medium acidity, tannins that were fine grained but persistent and medium long (30 seconds?) finish.

Keep in mind that dinner typically didn't start until 10:00 pm at the earliest! I knew there would be a lot more of me to love when I got home to my girlfriend! It was an exhausting and exhilarating first day with great promise of more of the same to come all week.