Joe Canal's Travels to Spain - Part 3

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!

El Nido is the flagship wine of the Gil family and it is produced along with its sibling Clio, at the El Nido winery in Jumilla. Nearby is the winery that produces the workhouse wines of the family, Hijos de Juan Gil and Wrongo Dongo. The latter is a collaborative project between the Gils and their importer Jorge Ordonez. We first went to the El Nido winery and toured the facility and caves. Loren and Angel Gil told us the about the history of the winery and traced it back to it's beginnings.

We then drove the short hop to the facility where Juan Gil and Wrongo Dongo are made. A less ornate, more functional structure than El Nido, this winery is all about business. Production on Juan Gil alone runs about 5,000 cases per vintage versus just under 300 cases for El Nido.

Of course the price for the two wines exist at opposite ends of the spectrum as well with El Nido commanding upwards of $100.00 and Juan Gil a very reasonable $11.00. We would taste El Nido and it sibling later that day over an amazing lunch of paella, but here in the winery at Juan Gil we sampled that wine and the Wrongo Dongo.

Here are my notes on the 2007 Juan Gil:
Color: Medium to dark ruby in the glass with a clean appearance (meaning no visible sediment or other matter)
Nose: Black fruits, cedar, and mint
Palate: Black fruits (blackberry, mulberry) medium + on the acidity, tannins med + and slightly grainy, medium long finish (25 seconds).

Now it was time to head off to lunch. I suppose no trip to Spain would be complete without a meal of paella. Restaurant Paco Gandia was reputed to make the best paella in Spain. That, in my humble opinion, is quite the claim! So into the van and away we went to find out. Upon arrival at the restaurant, we were greeted and offered cold beer to go with tapas. Predictable but very welcome nonetheless. The dried tuna, jamon, almonds, etc. were serving very well to whet our appetites. There were some common items we were seeing repeatedly at different meals which spoke quite clearly of the seasonality of the cuisine here. When things are in season and plentiful, you eat them. Not like home where you can get what you want when you want it from some other part of the world. Asparagus, particularly white asparagus was in season and we were served it at several meals, simply blanched and doused with the local Arbequina olive oil. It was delicious and far more wine friendly than its green counterpart. Fresh snails, another a seasonal staple in this part of the world were common and also delicious!

Now, making good paella is an art in itself, and one of which the Spaniards are very proud. There are variations on the components. This one we were served contained rabbit and more snails. The Chef at the restaurant was the owner's wife and we stepped in to observe our main course cooking the traditional was over burning grapevines.

While eating and talking with the Gils, we were also tasting and drinking two vintages of El Nido and the Clio. The difference between the two wines is the proportions in the blends that make them up. El Nido varies from vintage to vintage but is approximately 70% Cabernet Sauvignon and 30% Monastrell, both from old vines vineyard, while the Clio is approximately the inverse. The Cabernet vines are 30+ years old and the Monastrell vines are 60+ years old. The difference is evident on the nose and palate, as the Cabernet gives the El Nido a far more structured complexity. Both wines are massive in their weight, extraction, and mouthfeel. The fruit flavors are dark, rich, and creamy in their texture. The El Nido is put through what the Gils like to call 200% new oak treatment, in that the wine goes through malolactic fermentation in a mix of new French and American oak, and then is barrel aged in a second round of new French and American oak barrels. The extreme expenses of this type of vinification are what brings the retail price of the El Nido to almost three times that of the Clio. Is it three times as good? That is up to the individual consumer. Both wines are being made under the oversight of renown Australian winemaker Chris Ringland. Oh, and the paella? It looked like this:



Well, we had eaten most of it at that point.

After lunch we loaded up into the van again to head due south to the coastal resort city of Malaga. This is where Jorge Ordonez has his own project making wines with the Muscat grape. All this business of in the van, out of the van, into a hotel room for one night, move on, had us feeling kind of like rock musicians on tour. Our next tasting and tour wasn't until tomorrow, so we had no plans for the evening, except to watch some soccer on TV at a local wine and tapas bar. One of our intrepid band went way out on a limb and selected a place I personally had never heard of...

The next morning we would be off to Bodegas Botani.