Joe Canal's Travels to Spain - Part 4

Fridays on the BottleBlog will feature a food-related article, wine pairing, or travelogue. Today, we're continuing our travels with Wine Manager Mark Ricca and the team to Spain!

The next morning we were off to Bodegas Botani. We were going to visit the Muscat vineyards and taste the wines Jorge Ordonez was making from that fruit. For this project, Jorge partnered with Gerhard Kracher, the son of the late Alois Kracher, the famed Austrian winemaker. Their offices are surrounded by these vineyards on very steep sloping hills. The versatility of Muscat was demonstrated to us as we sampled three sweet dessert wines and one very delicious dry Muscat:

Bodegas Botani Dry Moscatel 2009
Color: Brilliant white with green highlights. Very clean and clear.
Nose: Green pineapple, lime zest, chalky minerality
Palate: Lime zest and pineapple, chalk and slate, bright acidity with an intense yet silky long finish.

After all this hard work tasting, we were off to lunch at a seaside restaurant in Malaga called Andres Maricuchi. By now, someone reading this must think that all we did was drink and eat. That is correct. This was another example of very simply prepared and presented food, specifically seafood that was so incredibly fresh, it was amazing. I myself, as a seafood lover, have to say that this was my favorite meal of the trip.

That platter of langostines said it all for me. Or was the platter of grilled sardines, or the platter of grilled prawns? They were all talking to me. It was an amazing lunch by the sea on a gorgeous spring day.


I never wanted that one to end, but end it must, because the next stop was a six hour drive away in the city of Segovia in the region of Rueda which is just northwest of the center of the country. We were meeting up again with Angel Gil for dinner and on the following morning we would visit Bodegas Shaya where they produce two wines from 100% Verdejo, a very noble white Spanish grape that, for a point of reference, drinks somewhat like Sauvignon Blanc.

I don't care who you are, six hours non-stop in a car, van, or whatever, anywhere can be grueling. Sleep doesn't come easily and even reading can be a chore. We pulled into Segovia somewhere around 9:00 pm local time to meet with Angel Gil. We entered the restaurant and gathered in the bar area and as had become the ritual that week, took glasses of beer with our tapas. One of the things that made this trip different for the producers we visited was the lack of the man himself, Jorge Ordonez. These were after all the wines of his portfolio. An unanticipated result of his absence was the lack of a translator. Many of the people we visited with had minimal ability with English. The task of bridging the language gap fell upon me and the Spanish I'd learned as a chef working in the NY/NJ area ten years previous.

There was a lot of halting speech and struggling to find the words to say what we wanted to say, but somehow it all worked out and there was even quite a bit of humor exchanged along the way. We moved from the bar area to the dining room and sat with Angel and were later joined by his other partner in Shaya, Enrique Busto. We relaxed while eating and talking about the Shaya winery and drinking the wine we were speaking about. These are magnificent wines from the Rueda region. They are made from 100% Verdejo with fruit sourced from the estate property itself and local growers as well. One of the things that struck me about this evening was that, as wine professionals, when we taste it doesn't always come down to perfect food and wine pairings. Although the wines we were drinking that evening were white, our main course was steak. No matter, again the food was excellent, as was the drink, and five very weary travelers were looking forward to getting to bed. The next morning we would visit Bodegas Shaya and re-taste the wines with sharper wits.

The next day we were off again from our hotel to the winery of Bodegas Shaya. Bodegas Shaya is another collaboration between the Gil family, Enrique Busto and importer Jorge Ordonez. The winery produces two wines, Shaya and Shaya Habis. Both are 100% Verdejo, the difference being that the Habis is a select cuvee, for all intents and purposes, a winemaker's reserve. Both wines display a beautiful balancing act of bracing acidity (which was a pleasant surprise given that these wines see at least partial malolactic fermentation) and ripe fruit. Both wines are partially barrel fermented and aged on their lees.

After tasting these wines we were off again, to the west to the region of Zamora near Toro in central Spain. We would lunch with Angel Gil and Enrique Busto and taste/drink two other wines he and Jorge are behind, Bodegas Triton and Avante Mencia. Jorge is at the center of Oro Wines Group which is behind many projects all over Spain involving an international who's who of producers and winemakers. The Gils are part of that group also. Triton is their project in Zamora and Avante is from Bierzo a little further to the northwest. Triton is 100% old vines Tinta de Toro, the regional variation of Tempranillo and Avante is 100% Mencia, a red grape thought to be a variation of Cabernet Franc. The setting for lunch was La Becera, a large restaurant/inn located in the hills of the region. The mood was relaxed, or as relaxed as could be considering we were never in one place for more than a couple of hours, and the meal was a perfect fit. Tapas with the obligatory cervzas and a slow cooked leg of lamb that was a spot on pairing with these particular wines.


Although I had my favorite meal(s), to single any one out was difficult to say the least. The combination of company, food, wine, and setting made all these meals amazing and wonderful. Unfortunately once they were over it was usually time to saddle up again and hit the road. Today we had two more stops to make and many miles to cover. Next up was Bodegas Emilio Moro in the Ribera del Duero.