dr_XeNo

Mumm Napa Wine Blogger Brunch

February 28, 2012 by Vinopanion: Ward Kadel - @drXeNo Leave a Comment

Bubbly is a beautiful thing. Sparkling wine has always been considered a wine of celebration; its intriguing bubbles rising up to toss forth a froth of scented effervescence, enlivening spirits at any accompanying event. For me however, bubbly, bubbly, and more bubbly is the way that I prefer to shimmy through life. My lady Elizabeth Fontaine, the beguiling star behind the brightness of my life, would only agree, with a most sensible of nods. Bubbles are her vinous companion, and at times, her artistic muse. We go through stretches where there is a bottle of bubbly to accompany each day…the other nice thing about sparkling wine is its low percent alcohol. 😉

And so it was with great fervor that we responded with a resounding YES to an invitation to attend a wine blogger luncheon last December at the renowned Mumm Napa (Twitter, Facebook, WineLog) estate in the Napa Valley, courtesy of Brand Action Team and Thea Dwelle of Luscious Lushes (Twitter, Facebook). As an interesting aside, Spoontonic Lounge (Twitter, Facebook) in Walnut Creek, one of our favorite haunts, has carried the Mumm Napa Napa Valley Brut Prestige for a little over a year. As a number of us adopted the bubbly as our signature drink, the tasty value non-vintage cuvée spread like wildfire and proprietor Jeffrey Sun has proceeded to clear through a good amount each month.

Beth and I arrived early at the Estate, up on Silverado Trail in the Rutherford AVA. While we’d had some poor weather earlier in the week, the sun had burst out that winter morning and was almost painfully exhilarating, sparkling through the moisture on the sleeping vines. We greeted Thea whom arrived a few minutes after ourselves and marveled at the number of people that were lining up to visit the popular winery, prior to its 10am opening.

We entered the winery once the large wooden doors were opened, revealing the courtyard in the center of the property. There we were greeted by Assistant Winemaker, Tamra Lotz and Mitch Davis. Mitch with his tall, clean looks and high energy, probably immediately brightened the mornings of many of the ladies in attendance. Tamra Lotz, a fellow Vintage High alumnus and classmate, is the easy-going, highly engaging sort that you’d want to lead you on a tasty tour of her winemaking facilities.

We were also greeted with my favorite sparkling wine of the day, the fantastic 2006 Mumm Napa Napa Valley Devaux Ranch Brut. Made with Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Pinot Meunier and their signature inclusion of Pinot Gris, this sparkler forced me to give it a QPRWK and AwesomeWK wine badges, yet it only clocks in at $36. That is a phenomenal price for a wine that features this much complexity. The fruit was sourced from their Devaux Ranch vineyard in Carneros, named for their founding winemaker, Guy Devaux. I’d summarize my tasting notes on this wine, but I think that it deserves the full breakdown of its deliciousness:

Color: A mix of yellow gold and brighter canary highlights, a very fine bead and frothy mousse.
Nose: Fantastic, with a complex fruit mixture of drier citrus, more rounder tropical fruit and yellow apple. Cream and light brioche is here as well, along with a zing of minerality.
Palate: Also awesome, this shows that same complex mixture of fruit from the nose, along with a beautiful round and yet very vibrant and creamy palate, with that same fine bead. Dustier toast comes in as well, finishing alternating clean citrus and creamier brioche. Extremely good and actually underpriced: AwesomeWK, QPRWK.

With the Devaux Ranch in our hands, we headed off into the winery for a tour of their facilities. Mumm Napa was founded in 1983, by M. Devaux for the G.H. Mumm Champagne house, based in Reims, France. The winery is a well-deserved and huge destination in the Napa Valley, with its regular tours, flight tastings, permanent Ansel Adams photography collection, and rotating photography exhibitions. While we were there, Media Ant and Mutineer Magazine‘s own Ashley Teplin was showing many of her photos of local food and wine artisans. It’s no wonder that they host over 130,000 visitors each year!

Tamra took us through the entire winemaking facilities that bright morning, starting with the tank room, where much of the current 2011 vintage wines were undergoing cold storage. This process allows (harmless) tartrate crystals to precipitate out, naturally leftover in the finished wine from the brightly acidic grapes that go into sparkling and most white wines. Most of the tanks were caked with frost, their glycol jackets at slightly freezing temperatures in order to get the wine cold enough for full stabilization. Following the crushpad tour, we had a short blending demonstration, which clearly showed the how each of the varietal wines mentioned earlier can contribute to the wine. Chardonnay for mouthfeel and pitted fruits, Pinot Noir for cherry fruits and further depth, Pinot Meunier for more darker fruit notes and earthiness and finally, Pinot Gris for more tropical fruits and floral notes.

Walking down the hall back to the tasting room, we encountered…BOB: their large and incredibly efficient robot that handles the bottling and handling of the wines, before they are transferred to the riddling room. Making sparkling wine is much more manually intensive than other wines. First you must make the still wine, filter it, and then it is time for the second dose of sugar and yeast that goes in to provide the bubbles. It is literally a second fermentation in the bottle, for the high end Traditional Method, or “méthode traditionnelle,” as it is called around the world in the French language. Following that, there is months to years of riddling, or the process by which the eventually spent yeast and their debris is shaken down into the neck of the bottle 1-2x per day, until it is ready to be removed for final bottling, called disgorgement. The final act is to top off the now sparkling bottle with a syrupy mixture of still wine and sugar, called the dosage, that tops up the wine and creates the proper house balance between acidity and sweetness for that particular label.

Whew! After all of that info, we were a bit thirsty. We moved on into a more private area of the main tasting lounge, where Winemaker Ludovic Dervin greeted us with the warmest of smiles coming from his strong, but kindly-featured face and barrel-strength body. Starting with a brief bio, he then began to walk us through the wines and touching upon the 2011 vintage, one which he described as “really a growers year, [with] a lot of work in the vineyard.”

Starting with the aforementioned Brut Prestige, we then traveled through almost their entire line, in the order listed below. All of the value wines, up through the Cuvée M, all featured very bright fruit flavors and a ton of crispness in style, with a hint of cream underlying everything. As we got into their higher end wines, I found two more that entered into my favorites. The Mumm Napa Napa Valley DVX 2003 featured a ton of complexity, with its brioche and more Old World complexity, still brightened by great acidity and the finest of bubbles. Additionally, the Mumm Napa Napa Valley Brut Reserve Rosé NV showed off super-crisp red and citrus fruit, alongside a great zing of cherry and minerality. In all, both Beth and I felt that their line included sparkling wines for any palate. Ludovic’s engaging personality and delight to answer any question made the tasting all the more entertaining and educational.

Beth’s and my own thanks go out to Brand Action Team, Thea, Tamra, Ludovic, and everyone else at Mumm Napa for the wonderful day tasting their wines and learning about their sparkling winemaking process.

You can find all of the wines listed below from that bright day at Mumm Napa (Twitter, Facebook, WineLog) in December. They are all tagged with “MummN2011Brunch“, so that you can list them in your own WineLog. All of the photos can be found on my Flickr in their own set and also on the Vinopanion Facebook page, in their own set. Cheers!

Mumm Napa (Twitter, Facebook, WineLog):

Mumm Napa Napa Valley Devaux Ranch Brut 2006

Color: A mix of yellow gold and brighter canary highlights, a very fine bead and frothy mousse.

Nose: Fantastic, with a complex fruit mixture of drier citrus, more rounder tropical fruit and yellow apple. Cream and light brioche is here as well, along with a zing of minerality.

Palate: Also awesome, this shows that same complex mixture of fruit from the nose, along with a beautiful round and yet very vibrant and creamy palate, with that same fine bead. Dustier toast comes in as well, finishing alternating clean citrus and creamier brioche. Extremely good and actually underpriced: AwesomeWK, QPRWK.

Mumm Napa Napa Valley Sparkling Pinot Meunier 2008

Mumm Napa Napa Valley Brut Prestige NV

Mumm Napa Napa Valley Brut Rosé NV

Mumm Napa Napa Valley Cuvée M NV

Mumm Napa Napa Valley Blanc de Blancs 2007

Mumm Napa Napa Valley Brut Reserve NV

Mumm Napa Napa Valley DVX 2003

Color: Medium to finer bead, deeper canary yellow.

Nose: Brioche, bread, earth, dried lemon and yellow apple, all with good intensity.

Palate: Weightier, very yeasty and savory, drier apricot, peach and very dry lemon bar. Good acid, savory and even showing some slight tannin: OldWorldWK.

Mumm Napa Napa Valley Brut Reserve Rosé NV

Color: Beautiful strawberry pink, very fine and very robust bead.

Nose: Crisp red fruit underlaid with a nice earthiness and line of minerality.

Palate: Very vibrant feel and zesty acidity, then some weight and rounder fruit comes in, finishing with a citrus and mineral finish: OldWorldWK.

Mumm Napa Napa Valley Santana Brut NV

Mumm Napa Napa Valley Brut Prestige Extended Tirage Selection NV

Mumm Napa Napa Valley Sparkling Pinot Noir NV

All wines on WineLog.net from Mumm Napa:

[winelist query=”Mumm%2BNapa” num=”100″]

Filed Under: Features, Wine, Wine Events, Wine Regions, Wine Review, Wine Reviews, Wineries · Tagged With: @MummNapaWinery, Ansel Adams, Blogger, Brand Action Team, brunch, Carneros, Coombsville, dr_XeNo, drXeNo, GH Mumm, Ludovic Dervin, Mumm, Mumm Napa, Napa Valley, Oak Knoll District, sparkling wine, Tammy Lotz, Ward Kadel, Wine, wine tasting, Yountville

#Navarra5 Day 2: Lost in Iruña, Malón de Echaide, & Bodegas Finca Albret

January 11, 2012 by Vinopanion: Ward Kadel - @drXeNo Leave a Comment

Our second full day in Kingdom of Navarra (Twitter, Facebook) (day 3 if you’re counting our travel day) started off a bit scary, due to the usual amount of stupidity that I tend to afford myself. As you’ve probably noticed from my previous post about Day 1 in Navarra, I love to go on a run in the cities that I visit around the world. I feel that it is one of the best ways to get to know a new foreign land and its people. Like ~~an idiot~~ always, I only carried my hotel keycard and a bit of cash in case I got into trouble and needed a taxi. I then headed out way before dawn at about 5:50am to streets unknown. Oh, and did I neglect to mention that I have absolutely no sense of direction?…I’m a total Marcus Brody. An hour later, my 20 minute jog has clearly turned into the definition of a lost tourist, replete with Spanglish as my only tool to communicate…no phone to call for a taxi, nor to even let my #Navarra5-mates know why I wouldn’t be in the lobby at 7:45am!

Not surprisingly, Navarrans don’t really like to get up early, like much of the Romantic cultures of Europe. I was more apt to find people going to BED, rather than going to work. The few people I did find were indeed, heading home after a long night of work or fun and knew absolutely no English, nor could I understand enough of their directions in their native Spanish. Yet despite this, they all tried happily and desperately to help me to find my way back to the hotel. Almost two hours later, I did find my way back with the help of multiple sleepy-eyed, kind residents of Pamplona. My final savior was a saintly man that convinced me to walk to “mi casa, esta near La Iglesia,” or near the church that I knew was a landmark in the city and near our hotel. As I recognized familiar storefronts and plazas, I begged off his very generous offer to cook me breakfast in his home and tiredly jogged over to the hotel. The beautiful kindness of the people of Navarra was burned into my mind after this experience and I feel that it will never leave my heart.

Despite my long morning adventures, I did manage to stumble down to the lobby at precisely 7:45am to meet the rest of our group for our long day out in the Navarran wine country. Our first stop of the morning was down in the southern end of Navarra, in its Ribera Baja sub-appellation. There we encountered a smaller rural town called Cascante that includes a large bodega known as Malón de Echaide (Facebook, WineLog). A co-op since 1951, it was founded with 1000 different grapegrowers, but with the extensive pullback in the grape growing industry in Spain over the last 15 years, their membership has been pared down to its current collective count of ~200. The winery was in full swing when we arrived with the harvest hitting all across Navarra. We then made the embarrassing mistake of clambering right over and onto the scale where winegrowers would weigh their grapes, in order to take some photo. I’m sure the farmer wasn’t too pleased with Cuvée Corner‘s Bill Eyer (Twitter, Facebook), Wine Harlots‘ Nannette Eaton (Twitter, Facebook), and myself adding to his initial tare (no scales were harmed in the making of this post). Following our gaffe, we headed inside for a tasting of their value wines and tour of the very active winery, including their in-house bottling line, all courtesy of Patricia Ansorena Sanchez.

The wines of Malón de Echaide are a perfect example of the high level of quality for the price that you can get with the wines from Navarra. The wines we tasted were ridiculously cheap, with the majority of them hitting your wallet for only $5 (~¢1.30)…that is, if they were available in the US. Get on it, importers! The most expensive of the lot we tasted, from their Viña Parot Reserva line, still would only top out at around $16 in the US. The most fascinating wines for me were the value line, including one that garnered a WKBadge. The 2007 Malón de Echaide Navarra Crianza, a wine that by Spanish law has been aged at the bodega for a minimum of 2 years with one of those in oak, showed incredible QPR. Featuring flint, cherry fruit and toast in the nose and all of that plus black currant and dusty tannins on the palate, this wine still is only in that (future) $5 range.

A later tour of the winery was where we discovered the active bottling plant (see the video below), along with a massive underground barrel cellar, and possibly one of the largest fermentation tanks that I’ve ever seen, at well over 100,000 gallons.

[youtube width=”383″ height=”310″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBOHTGdo8Ic[/youtube]

Our next stop was quite some ways away and to the north from Echaide and we had to cross the river Ebro to get to it. The Ebro river runs through a number of famous wine regions in Spain, including both Navarra and Rioja. We crossed it over a rather dramatic hanging white steel bridge, but I was unable to get a good shot of it from the back of our speeding minivan. Our destination was Bodegas Finca Albret (Facebook, WineLog). It is found in the Ribera Alta sub-appellation and it is the first property developed by its parent, Bodegas Príncipe de Viana (Facebook), an older bodega and where we would later have a stunning, primarily vegetarian lunch. Here we were greeted by Communications Manager Marifé Blanco along with Albret’s viticulturalist for a vineyard tour.

The soil of Albret is rocky alluvial, somewhat similar to Châteauneuf-du-Pape in the Rhone Valley of France. The vines surrounding the bodega and seen in the photo to the right were Graciano, a variety and resulting varietal wine that I found to be one of my favorites from Navarra. Marifé said that Graciano is a very challenging grape to grow, much like Pinot Noir. In the neighboring region of Rioja, she said that they say: “Graciano? Gracias No!” Including the Graciano, the bodega has a total of 400 acres of vineyards, both surrounding the winery and in the nearby rivers and hills. The 2011 vintage had been good to them so far, with warm, even weather that had very little rain during harvest by that point.

Our tasting was led by the Enologist/Winemaker, Isabel Lopez de Murillas Manrique. These wines were definitely at a higher price point than Echaide, but were still mainly in the $24 – $32 range. My favorites were the Reservas, natch. 😉 The Albret Navarra Reserva 2006 featured a closed nose, indicating that it needed some aging, but the palate showed off some very nice ripe, juicy red and black cherry, powerful, fine tannins, and an earthier cherry tobacco finish. Meanwhile their flagship wine, the Albret Navarra La Viña de Mi Madre Reserva 2006 also needs plenty of aging, but includes many of the flavors of the standard Reserva, plus chalkier tannin and more of a dried black fruit on the palate, along with cigar box. Both wines garnered KeeperWK badges.

After the previously mentioned astounding lunch, we drove back up north to Pamplona and most of us took a long-awaited snooze on that longer drive back to our hotel, the Palacio Guandelain. After another brief respite, we congregated again for a guided tour of Pamplona, led by a wonderful tour guide. Pamplona is a city of 200,000 residents year-round and can swell to over three times that many for the Festival of San Fermín, or the “Running of the Bulls,” made so famous by Ernest Hemingway. Indeed, they have many famous landmarks within the city, devoted to Hemingway. We even were able to drink one of his favorite digestif following dinner that night, the local speciality called Pacharán. It is made from sloe berries and anisette and served over ice. I immediately became hooked on this, being a fan of many herbal aperetis and digestifs, and was rather delighted to be drinking it at Hemingway’s old hangout, Café Iruña. With that, we called it a night and collapsed into bed, resting up for Day 3!

Our travels across Navarra were tagged in realtime on Twitter using the hashtag #Navarra5. The intro post in this series can be found earlier on Vinopanion, with Day 1 being my previous post in this series. You can find all of the photos & videos from this fabulous trip to Navarra, Spain (Twitter, Facebook) (and a little to Basque Country) on my Flickr in their own set and tagged with “Navarra5“. All of my runs that I took (including getting lost!) are on my MapMyFitness, titled “Wines of Navarra“. Lastly and most importantly, all of the awesome wines that we had from our first day are listed below and all are tagged with “Navarra5” so that you can list them in your own WineLog. Cheers!

Wines from Malón de Echaide (Facebook, WineLog):

Malón de Echaide Navarra Crianza 2007

Color: Med ruby, light ruby edges

Nose: Ripe black cherry with light flint and touch of toast and anise.

Palate: Medium to full bodied, with bright and deep black and red fruit, light, drier coating tannins and a black currant finish. Very good for this price, if it were available in the US: QPRWK.

Malón de Echaide Navarra Rosado Garnacha 2010

Malón de Echaide Navarra Tinto Roble Garnacha 2008

Viña Parot Navarra Reserva 2003

Color: Medium garnet, light garnet edges.

Nose: Earthy here, with still good drier black fruit, cool anise and charred earth.

Palate: Cool and bright mouthfeel with dried black fruit and tobacco with cigar box out into the lighter tannin finish and dried earth. Good: OldWorldWK.

Wines from Bodegas Finca Albret (Facebook, WineLog):

Albret Navarra Chardonnay 2010

Albret Navarra Rosado Garnacha 2010

Albret Navarra French Oak Crianza 2007

Albret Navarra Reserva 2006

Color: Darkest garnet, darker garnet edges.

Nose: Flinty and hot, rocky earth. Fruit is closed but does have some black poking thru.

Palate: Very red cherry licorice, with lots of that savory tobacco and hot stone here as well, good acidity and powerful but fine tannins. Finish is cherry tobacco and long and earthy: KeeperWK.

Albret Navarra La Viña de Mi Madre Reserva 2006

Color: darkest ruby, ruby edges

Nose: Cool red fruit, big fresh anise and dark cocoa as well, earth here as well. Some kind of violet florals add complexity.

Palate: Bigger acidity, supporting chalkier tannins, big anise here as well. Chocolate & tobacco, dry bigger tannin structure. Good and very young. Ends with black fruit and some of that cocoa, a bit of juiciness as well. Good but young: KeeperWK.

All of the wines from our trip to the Kingdom of Navarra (Twitter, Facebook, WineLog):

[winelist query=”Navarra5″ num=”150″]

Filed Under: Features, Foreign Wines, Travel, Wine Regions, Wine Review, Wine Reviews, Wineries, Wines Under $10 · Tagged With: @NavarraWine, #Navarra5, ARGOS Wine Consulting, Bar Gaucho, Basque Country, Bilbao, Bodegas Finca Albret, Cafe Iruna, D.O., DO, dr_XeNo, drXeNo, Ernest Hemingway, Kraynick & Associates, Malon de Echaide, Miguel Michael Mantilla, Navarra, Navarra D.O., Palacio Guandelain, Pamplona, Pancharan, Pintxos, Príncipe de Viana, Spain, The Sun Also Rises, Vinopanion, Ward Kadel, Wines of Navarra, WKBadges

Le Wine Buff Teaches Wine Finance

November 7, 2011 by Vinopanion: Ward Kadel - @drXeNo Leave a Comment

My super fine readers would have to be asleep not to know about my longtime wine project as Le Wine Buff (WineLog) for Enjoy Bordeaux (Twitter, WineLog). Well, recently I sat down to lunch with reporter Ryan Flinn alongside my fellow ‘Buff Rebecca Chapa (Twitter, Facebook) and we discussed our efforts to get the word out about the quantity of affodable, high quality Bordeaux wine. Lo and behold, Ryan Flinn put together a great article discussing just how relevant affordable, high quality Bordeaux wines within the context of the sky-rocketing prices of über-premium wines due to the rise of fine wine culture in China. The article has already been picked up by Bloomberg, BusinessWeek and SFGate, so check it out at any of the prior links. Cheers!

Filed Under: Announcement, Features, Foreign Wines, News and Interest, Press Release, Red Table Wine, Wine, Wine Regions, Wines Under $10 · Tagged With: @BordeauxWines, #LeWineBuff, affordable, Bloomberg, Bordeaux, BusinessWeek, Chateau, dr_XeNo, drXeNo, Enjoy Bordeaux, France, Le Wine Buff, Ryan Flinn, San Francisco Chronicle, SFGate, USA, value, Ward Kadel, Wine

#Navarra5 Day 1: D.O.ing Navarra, Inurrieta & Ochoa

October 9, 2011 by Vinopanion: Ward Kadel - @drXeNo 3 Comments

The #Navarra5 team hit the ground running (not yet drinking) at the start of our first full day (09/19/11) in the great Kingdom of Navarra (Twitter, Facebook) with our trusty guide and F1 driver Michael “Miguel” Mantilla (ARGOS Wine Consulting/Kraynick & Associates, Inc.). Technically I ran the day before, through parts of the glorious and small city of Pamplona, capital of Navarra/Navarre and the setting of many a famous scene in the writings of their adopted son, Ernest Hemingway. I ran past some of his favorite haunts during that afternoon jog, past the tolling bells of the Church of San Lorenzo, and through the ruins of the Citadel. One of my favorite ways to get to know a new city, neighborhood or surrounding land is to take a run through it’s fresh splendor.

[Update 01/14/12: The first video from our trip can be seen below, filmed at the Palacio Real de Olite.]

We jetted South from Pamplona in our trusty Citroën towards to Olite on the AP-15 to get to our first stop of the Spanish morning. Navarra or Navarre, while it is its own nationally recognized Autonomous Region with its own government and special privileges from the federal government, it is also of course, a Denominación de Origen (DO) or federally recognized wine appellation. There we met with Jordi Roagout (Manager) and Pilar García-Granero (DO President), where the latter gave a great overview of the Navarra DO. The climate for Navarra is widely diverse across its 5 sub-regions, rather unusual for Spain. As such, they are able to grow a wide mix of both “continental varietals” such as Cabernet, Merlot and Chardonnay, as well as varietals that are considered more typical of Spain such as Tempranillo and that Garnacha. “Our climate and soils obligate us” to market all wines from here, Pilar said. As winegrowers and winemakers across Navarra have learned to merge their 2000 year history of grape cultivation along with modern farming and winemaking techniques, the resulting wines have changed dramatically in both style and content. Now Tempranillo is the dominant varietal overall, at 37%, with 5% being dry whites of mainly Chardonnay and the historically dominant rosado now comprising about 25% of the current production.

“A castle is for fighting. A palace is for living.” Javier, our guide at Palacio Real de Olite, had just started our super-fast tour of the Royal Palace and Castle at Olite, a beautiful and ancient stone city near the heart of Navarra and an internationally recognized World Heritage Site. Charles III (or Carlos) was the original builder of the Palace, and also the insigator of much of the newer building towards the end of his life. The whole complex is actually made up of 3 different eras of building, all of which were eventually burned and destroyed during the Napoleanic Wars, to try and dissuade the French legions from their continual plundering and occupation during those bellicose times.

[youtube width=”383″ height=”310″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTKArCjjHFU[/youtube]

Our first Bodega (winery) visit of the trip was the to the young and exciting Bodega Inurrieta (Facebook, WineLog). They are an estate-only winery and family owned. They planted the first of their 568 acres of vines in 1999, in a beautiful and tiny valley near the river Arga in the Navarra sub-region of Ribera Alta. We were initially greeted by the tall and jovial head of export sales, Jose Antonio Pellicer He gave us a brief tour of winery which was in full harvest swing, with all of the whites and about 1/3 of the reds already in from the vineyards. The Sauv Blanc, Cab Sauv, and Shiraz were all already in, with the Merlot having been harvested just the day before. With this small break in the action, we had the fortune of being joined by the head winemaker (Oenologist), Kepa Segastizabal. The warm and kindly Kepa was very engaging, and kept apologizing for his English. He was actually quite accomplished in our language however, and was able to lead us through our tasting with minimal help from Jose. The wines showed a lot of what I like from Spain, exhibiting great acidity, low amounts of new oak and despite the relatively young age of some of the vines, great savory characteristics as well, including a sense of place. This whole tasty package was wrapped in a ton of value for the quality. Indeed, the $12 2008 Bodega Inurrieta Navarra Norte was a lesson in QPRWK. My favorite wine of the day was a mind-opening experience about the impact that Graciano could have on this region. The 2005 Bodega Inurrieta Navarra Laderas de Inurrieta Reserva was a tremendous wine that even with its $40 US price, is still ridiculously under priced. Ripe black and red fruit, charred earth and tobacco and fine, medium powered tannins make this juicy wine a wonderful effort. Following this, we retired to the dining room on the property and had a delicious meal of locally grown cuisine, including the traditional Spanish dessert, Cuajada. We were shocked at the end to find out that our chef was none other than Bodega Inurrieta founder, José Antonio Arriola!

We headed over to Bodegas Ochoa (Twitter, Facebook, WineLog), our next stop, while still happily digesting our multi-course lunch. Bodegas Ochoa is right down the road from the Palacio Real de Olite, which was probably quite handy once upon a time, considering that the family has produced wines since they were originally well-loved by Kings Charles II and Charles III. The Ochoa family has been crafting fine wines from their Navarran Estate in Olite for the last 6 centuries. The current patriarch of the family, Javier Ochoa Martínez, is still the Director of the Bodega and his wife remains the Cellar Master. The family run winery is completed by his winemaker daughter Adriana Ochoa and youngest daughter Beatriz Ochoa now handling the domestic and international marketing. We were met by the ebullient Beatriz and Pablo Aguirre, Sales Manager. While tasting through their wines and very enjoyable estate olive oil, we were briefly treated to a cameo by Javier, whose joyous playful demeanor is quite clearly where Beatriz gained her own. The wines from Ochoa were even fresher than Inurrieta, yet featured that same great mix of complex ripe fruits and underlying savory herbs, earth and tobacco. The wines were wonderfully light with their oak treatment and my palate was again delighted to find another fantastic Navarra Graciano. The 2007 Ochoa Navarra Serie 8a Mil Gracias Graciano, named for Javier’s penchant for signing documents with a simple “8a” (Ocho-a). It features a deep ruby and violet color, with another great mix of dark, ripe and juicy fruit, complemented beautifully by the white pepper and violet floral finish. The fine and chewier tannins add mouthfeel and even more pleasure. The 8a Mil Gracias Graciano, along with the great Inurrieta effort haunted me throughout the rest of the trip with their dark complexities and were two of my favorite wines for the entire week.

Following a short break we headed back out on foot from the beautiful Palacio Guandelain for a 9 o’clock dinner. The small 25 room hotel is clever mix of the original 18th century design and contemporary modern touches. Originally built by the Viceroy of New Granada, it was converted to a boutique modern luxury hotel and reopened in May of last year. We could not have had a more glamorous #Navarra5 HQ!

The stroll to the resto in the lightly cool Navarran night lasted only 10 minutes. We were joined by Conchi Biurrun, Manager for the Navarra DO. She led us to one of the nicest restaurants in Pamplona, called Enekorri. The restaurant is styled hyper-modern, with dark brushed steel and wood as the predominant features. One of the coolest ones is a basement wine cellar with a glass ceiling…ie, the floor that you walk upon! Our food was another exercise in amazing Navarran cuisine, but each plate was completed with a modern fusion twist: Way, way YUM. It was a brilliant end to our first full day in Navarra. Stay tuned for Day 2…

Our travels across Navarra and Bilbao were tagged in realtime on Twitter using the hashtag #Navarra5. The intro post in this series can be found earlier on Vinopanion. You can find all of the photos & videos from this fabulous trip to Navarra, Spain (Twitter, Facebook) (and a little in Basque Country) on my Flickr in their own set and tagged with “Navarra5“. All of my runs that I took (including getting lost!) are on my MapMyFitness, titled “Wines of Navarra“. Lastly and most importantly, all of the awesome wines that we had from our first day are listed below and all are tagged with “Navarra5” so that you can list them in your own WineLog. Cheers!

Wines from Bodega Inurrieta (Facebook, WineLog):

Bodega Inurrieta Navarra Orchídea Sauvignon Blanc 2010

Color: lighter yellow, clear edges

Nose: Very tart gooseberry then an underlay of cream that is just starting to fill up.

Palate: Great tart and creamier grapefruit and gooseberry medley, zesty acidity with that cream caressing the mouth as well, light white florals in the finish, bit of lemon custard as well. Very good: NewWorldWK.

Bodega Inurrieta Navarra Mediodía 2010

Bodega Inurrieta Navarra Orchídea Cuvée 2010

Bodega Inurrieta Navarra Sur 2008

Bodega Inurrieta Navarra Norte 2008

Color: Dark ruby, medium ruby core

Nose: Black and red fruit with sweeter tones to it and lightest oak.

Palate: Black flinty fruit here, stoic, then sweeter ripe cherry comes in the mid-palate, charred earth finish with balanced acidity and coating, fine tannins. Very good: QPRWK.

Bodega Inurrieta Navarra Cuatrocientos Crianza 2008

Bodega Inurrieta Navarra Altos de Inurrieta Reserva 2007

Bodega Inurrieta Navarra Laderas de Inurrieta Reserva 2005

Color: Very dark almost inky ruby, med ruby edges

Nose: Dark fruit, earth and dust, very tight now.

Palate: Sweet and ripe black fruit, dry palate overall tho. Great charred fruit and tobacco here, with fine medium tannins, some blue fruit out into the juicy finish: AwesomeWK.

Bodega Inurrieta Navarra PV 2007

Wines from Bodegas Ochoa (Twitter, Facebook, WineLog):

Ochoa Navarra Blanco Viura & Chardonnay 2010

Ochoa Navarra Rosado Garnacha 2010

Ochoa Navarra Garnacha & Tempranillo 2010

Ochoa Navarra Crianza Tempranillo 2008

Ochoa Navarra Serie 8a Mil Gracias Graciano 2007

Color: Deeper violet and ruby core with ruby edges, violet highlights.

Nose: Great black fruit here, closed and dusty, with white pepper and deeper violet florals. Very nice.

Palate: Beautiful, with chewy, but not overly big tannins with some fineness. Juicy acidity complements the darkest fruit here, with anise and earthiness. White pepper closes it out with those violets again. Quite an effort: AwesomeWK.

Ochoa Navarra Reserva 2005

Color: Medium to darker ruby with ruby edges.

Nose: More fruit than anticipated, of a complex red and black medley, but then some great savory herbs, meat and earth come in, mixed with loam and leather.

Palate: Quite good, with dry, very fine tannins, wonderful acidity and black and Bing cherry, mixed with drier black fruit and deep anise. Earth, loam and leather come in here, into the more savory finish. very good: OldWorldWK.

Ochoa Navarra Dulce de Moscatel 2010

All of the wines from our trip to the Kingdom of Navarra (Twitter, Facebook, WineLog):

[winelist query=”Navarra5″ num=”150″]

Filed Under: Features, Foreign Wines, Travel, Wine Regions, Wine Review, Wine Reviews, Wineries · Tagged With: @NavarraWine, #Navarra5, ARGOS Wine Consulting, Basque Country, Bilbao, Bodega Inurrieta, D.O., DO, dr_XeNo, drXeNo, Ernest Hemingway, Kraynick & Associates, Miguel Michael Mantilla, Navarra, Navarra D.O., Olite, Palacio Guandelain, Palacio Real de Olite, Pamplona, Spain, The Sun Also Rises, Vinopanion, Ward Kadel, Wines of Navarra

Back across the pond: Navarra, here I COME

September 15, 2011 by Vinopanion: Ward Kadel - @drXeNo 1 Comment

It is with no small excitement that I am able to announce a new trip to vino heaven, once again this year. Navarra, Spain is both an autonomous region (Navarre) as well as an ancient wine region, whose wine roots date back up to 1,200 years. It was once a great and proud kingdom and sits between what is now the Spanish wine appellation of Rioja and the French wine appellation of Bordeaux. Consequently, it has grows an awesome mix of grape varieties from both regions that have been approved by the Navarra Denominación de Origen (DO): Garnacha Tinta, Tempranillo, Graciano, Mazuelo, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Shiraz, Garnacha Blanca, Malvasia, Moscatel, Viura, Chardonnay, and Sauvignon Blanc. It also has a long history as an approved DO (the Spanish equivalent of a wine AVA or appellation that has strict, government-regulated quality control and approved grape growing and winemaking methods), celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2008. And it is to Navarra that I have the great fortune to fly, this coming Saturday!

Update: Post for Day 1.

The kind folks at Wines of Navarra (Twitter, Facebook, Blog) are sending myself and 4 other bloggers (we’ve deemed ourselves the #Navarra5) to their wine region, organized by Balzac Communications. It is there that we’ll learn about the aforementioned ancient kingdom that once dominated the landscape. That same region is now a wine industry reinventing itself for the new millennium, while still fiercely hanging on to its (considerable) vinous and cultural roots. Along the way we’ll visit their 5 sub-regions (one for each of us!), roam some very real castles, eat a fantastic mix of distinctly Navarran cuisine and stay the week in its famous capital, Pamplona, known for the Festival of San Fermin and its running of the bulls. You can even set up your own future itinerary to Navarra, incredibly similar to ours, using one they’ve recently posted to their blog!

The list of fantastic bloggers that I am be lucky to be a part is given below. Be sure to check out their top-notch vinopanion content throughout our travels, starting Sunday in Bilbao [Basque Country], 9/18. Until then…cheers!