TN: Wines of Navarra Spain - Trade Tasting

WINE TALK
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WINES OF NAVARRA SPAIN - TRADE TASTING - Palace Hotel, San Francisco, California (9/9/2009)


This was an enlightening exposure for me to the wines of Navarra, and I tasted 75 wines, which represented about 85% of what was on hand. I didn’t have high expectations, given what I’d read of the region, but I found some very solid producers, and a handful of quite tasty wines. The very best lineup, for me, were the wines of the relatively new (founded in 2003) project Compañía Vitivinícola Tandem. My single highest scored wine of the tasting was the 2004 Señorío de Andión of Bodegas Marco Real. I was not very impressed by the, primarily unoaked, Chardonnays on hand. A few of the Roses, known as Rosados, were quite good, and very good values. Some of the Garnacha based wines were just ripe berry and fairly boring, while others had some complexity. The Tempranillo and Bordeaux-style blends tended to be the strongest offerings. Several producers were also showing Muscat-based sweet wines, a few of which were quite good.

Navarra is the name both of the autonomous region in northern Spain, and of the wine zone, Navarra D.O., which lies between Rioja and the French border to the northeast. The Navarra D.O. is divided into five zones: Baja Montana, Tierra Estella, Valdizarbe, Ribera Alta and Ribera Baja.
Bodega de Sarría
Winery was founded in 1953. This is a solid lineup, with unusual 100% varietal Graciano and Mazuelo bottlings (No. 7 and No. 8).

Bodega Inurrieta
This project began in 1999 with the planting of the first vines, and was completed with the first wines in 2002. I found this a fairly mediocre lineup, with the exception of the Norte and the Reserva, perhaps due in part to the fairly young vines.

Bodega Otazu
This winery claims to be the northernmost winery producing red wine in Spain. They make wine only from grapes grown on their own Pago De Otazu 114 acre winery. The Altar is a very nice wine.

Bodegas Campos de Enanzo
This winery was established in 1958 and average vine age is close to 25 years. A solid lineup.

Bodegas Castillo de Monjardín
This producer is based in the northwest corner of Navarra, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, close to the French border. They have 500 acres of vineyards at an altitude of 500 to 1800 feet. The Deyo is tasty, if very international in style, as is the Crianza.

Bodegas Chivite

Founded in 1657, this winery claims to be “the oldest wine producing dynasty in Spain.” It has expanded from its original establishment in Navarra to estates in Rioja and Ribera del Duero. This was a very solid, tasty lineup.

Bodegas Marco Real
This winery was established in Olite in 1988 and belongs to Familia Belasco Wineries, which also owns Señorío de Andión and wineries in Toro and Mendoza, Argentina. The pricey–$45–Señorío de Andión was my top scoring wine of the tasting, and the Crianza is a good value at $10.

Bodegas del Romero
This is a cooperative cellar in the south of Navarra founded by several growers in 1951. It later merged with two other coops from two other zones in the province, making it one of the largest producers in Navarra. Not one of the strongest lineups, and only the Rosado really impressed.

Bodegas Ochoa
The winemaking Ochoa family traces its origins to the 14th Century, and their entire production comes from their own 143 hectares of vineyards. The Dulce was one of the best Moscatels of this tasting.

Bodegas Piedemonte
This winery claims to have a lot of international distribution. The Reserva is a very good wine.

Bodegas Príncipe de Viana
This winery was founded in 1983. In 2000 they acquired Rioja Vega, a Rioja winery that is over 125 years old. This was a mediocre lineup.

Bodegas San Martin

This bodega was founded in 1914 and owns over 800 hectares of Cabernet Sauvignon, Tempranillo and Garnacha. The Ilgares are their young wines; the Ilgares red selections are aged in new oak barrels, and the Señorío de Unx are oak-cask aged, with further aging in bottle. This was a very solid lineup with an excellent Rosado.

Bodegas Vicente Malumbres
This is a family business whose wines are strongly Garnacha based.

Compañía Vitivinícola Tandem
José María Fraile

This winery is located in the western area of Navarra in the Yerri Valley. Alicia Eyaralar is the winemaker and co-owner with José María Fraile, of this project they launched in 2003. This was the single most impressive lineup of the tasting, and also reasonably priced, with the wines below ranging from $15 for the Palacio de Eza, to $20 for the Ars Nova and $30 for the Ars Macula, Bordeaux-styled wine. With such achievement in a few short years, this is a project to watch.

Vinos y Viñedos Dominio Lasierpe
This producer claims to have the largest surface area and greatest diversity of vineyards in Navarra. This was a solid lineup, with a very good Tempranillo-Merlot blend and Crianza.

Posted from CellarTracker

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Thanks for posting these notes, it sure looks like you tasted a lot of wine.

I attended the Wines of Navarra tasting in Edinburgh late last year, and I have to confess I didn;t get a lot of pleaseure out of the wines. In particular the reds lacked freshness and were dominated by feral, animally, flavours.

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Thanks for the excellent notes. I have not had many of these but I always liked Chivite wines.

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Is this the Homenaje rosado of Bodegas Marco Real (shown below)?

If so, this is my house rosado (Tempier is my house rosé) and also one of my usual beach wines. It is quite suitable to our tropical clime and pairs well with several of our local pork dishes as well.

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Seems to have been a tasting that was set up with very much the current situation of the US market (with pricey wines not selling at all) in mind - very few expensive wines were on hand, and most wineries showed their basic lineups, with such exceptions as the Señorío de Andión or Chivite’s only top-range wine on hand, the red Colección 125 Reserva.

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We sell the Enanzo Chard and Rosado…the retail for about $7/btl…good bargains…

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Victor,
You clearly know your Spanish wines. I was wondering why more of the premium wines weren’t being shown as well, and I think you’re right, that the tasting was designed to showcase Navarra as a source of value, low-priced wines, with the exception of the couple you mentioned.

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Victor - that set up is fairly typical of what they’ve been bringing around to NY for the past few years. Some of those guys are looking for importers, but for the past few years I’ve seen mostly wines at this level.

And Richard - the Ochoa moscatel IS the best one in Navarra.

One of the HUGE problems they have is that Navarra has incorporated a lot of “international”, or French grapes. So they’re making things like merlot, which is not usually found as a monovarietal bottling in Spain. Some of the efforts are quite good actually, but it’s nearly impossible to sell those wines at the prices the wineries want. At least in the US it is.

There hasn’t been a break-out wine either, i.e. one that garnered huge points from critics and focused attention on the area. I think the basic wines have improved drastically and they aren’t as green as maybe a few years ago, but Navarra doesn’t have much American mind share. In a place like Jumilla, one or two producers have picked up a lot if attention and I suspect that to the degree they know any regions in Spain, there are probably more Americans who know about Jumilla than Navarra, notwithstanding the fact that it’s got a fraction of the wineries and it was created as a D.O. only very recently.

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A few notes:

While Navarra is one of the oldest apppellations (1933) in Spain, Jumilla also belongs to the select few that are more than 40 years old (1966). Jumilla is much larger (30,000 hectares vs. 17,000 hectares) and also has fewer but far larger wineries.

Navarra has two very distinguished native grape varieties, the red garnacha (with Spain’s northernmost grenache vineyards) and the white moscatel de grano menudo (muscat blanc à petits grains). The better small producers are now veering away from excessively international-styled blends (they did plant a lot of merlot and cabernet sauvignon, and some chardonnay), although they have Spain’s best climate conditions for merlot and chardonnay. So they are making more wine with a ‘Navarra style’, including red blends dominated by garnacha and tempranillo, and white blends with viura and moscatel de grano menudo.

(BTW - actually, Ochoa doesn’t make the best sweet muscat in Navarra. The Chivite Colección 125 Moscatel de Grano Menudo stands alone as an amazingly refined, botrytis-rich muscat made in the reductive, barrel-fermented style of Sauternes whites. There’s also the traditional oxydative muscats, aged in large vats and in glass demijohns in the open air as they are in Maury or Banyuls, of which the non-vintage Camilo Castilla Capricho de Goya is the best, and it can be pretty amazing.)

There are now some wines of great character and class that may put the Navarra region over the hump recognition-wise. The best are the reds from Señorío de Arínzano, the Chivite family’s cool-climate, mountain estate, which is now a ‘vino de pago’, i.e. a single-estate appellation, separate from the Navarra DO.

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Great piece of info from Victor!
I am always looking at Jumilla before Navarra…err after Portugal!

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Victor - I was wondering what they were going to do about the merlot because I’m all for planting whatever will make good wine in a given area. I spent last week with a guy who planted sagrantino in Hungary. And Italy makes pretty good merlot and cab franc. Problem is that nobody here wants to buy those wines, no matter how good, unless they get high scores and then follow-up press. You know how it is - we want to know if the wines are really good or if we just think they are. [basic-smile.gif]

As far as the Ochoa - what can I say. It was obviously tongue in cheek but at the same time that’s also a wine that I happen to like and sell. And it really is better than the run of the mill and goes for a reasonable price. Non botrytized tho if I’m not mistaken.

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Nekeas’ Marain shows how good a varietal Navarra merlot can be - and also how little interest it attracts internationally! But some merlot-grenache blends, for instance, are intriguing and do have that ‘Navarra character’. Tempranillo-cabernet-merlot is also very much a Navarra staple which can give pretty good results.

Ochoa’s muscat is fine, of course. But the Chivite Colección 125 simply plays in another league - which naturally shows also in the price!