Some alternative Spanish Whites

I am in the minority amongst my friends, but on a warm summer evening, I find that there’s very little more appealing that a chilled glass of dry sherry. Manzanilla sherry is a particular type of Fino, from a very specific area, on the coast, which takes on the salty flavours of the sea and so is even more savoury and salty than ordinary Fino. Descriptors at the tasting ranged from medicine cabinets, seaweed, Marmite and Bendick’s Bittermints to, sadly, bile. Alex was even reminded of being car sick. However, I was in heaven and particularly loved the Bodegas Hidalga, La Gitana Manzanilla and Waitrose Solera Jerezana Manzanilla. La Gitana is £6.99/£6.49 at Majestic for a full bottle and £5.05 at Somerfield for the very handy 50 cl bottle. Waitrose Jerezana is £7.25. Both were intensely savoury and salty.

We then moved on to unfortified wines. They were a diverse group with two varieties I’d never even heard of. Our favourite was Macia Batle, Blanc de Blancs 2006, which is from Mallorca and is made from the Prensal grape. It’s £9.79 from Noel Young Wines in Cambridge (01223 844744) and £9.99 from The Vineyard in Dorking (01306 876828). I’m not aware of having tasted Mallorcan white before and this one was very impressive indeed. The smell was pleasant and fairly restrained, but the taste was full and rich, with some texture from oak, but nothing aggressive. It was ripe and delicious.

Pazo Serantellos, Albarino 2006, from Rias Baixas is £34.14 for a case of 6 at Tesco.com. It had a promisingly rich smell of pineapple and was warm and full in the mouth, finishing with grapefruit.

My own favourite was Luis Canas Rioja Blanco 2006 which is £6.92 from Laithwaites (0870 066 5689). It had a delicious smell of buttery coconut – very perfumed, almost to the point of resembling something cosmetic. It was dry but with some sweetness on the finish and the full flavour had just a hint of oak.

Palacio de Bornos Verdejo 2006 is £73.92 for a case at Waitrose Direct, which equates to £6.16 a bottle. From the reaction of the rest of the panel, I’d advise you to try the grape, Verdejo, before ordering a whole case. I love the fresh, catty, flowering currant smell, with a hint of rotting mango, but it is quite challenging. The taste was fresh, clean and attractive and nearer to Sauvignon Blanc than anything else.

Mas Macia 2006, made from Xarel-lo grapes, is available at Scatchards in Liverpool and Laymont & Shaw in Truro, for between £6.50 and £7.00. However, it had a cheap smell of peardrops, which faded to almost nothing. It wasn’t unpleasant in the mouth, and was fairly fresh, but the wines above were just better.

Our least favourite was Marques de Alella Clasico (sic), made from Pansa Blanca grapes. It smelt of sherbet and was astonishing fizzy. It tasted as if you’d filled a tumbler with about an inch of grapefruit juice and filled it up with slightly old fizzy water. Not good.

Some alternative Spanish Whites

© Copyright 2007 Mel Jones