jose pastor...

ok, here we go, my favorites:

benaza - moneterrei
2008 benaza godello - (80% godello, 10% dona blanca, 10% treixadura) great expressive godello, and a bargain given the prices good godello seems to be fetching these days.

2008 benaza mencia - (80% mencia, 10% bastardo, 10% arauxa/tempranillo) fresh fruit, easy drinking and delicious. another bargain.

vevi - rueda
2008 vevi verdejo/viura - light, crisp, easy, stupid cheap for the quality.

bielsa - campo de borja
2008 bielsa rose - (garnacha) fruit, easy, cheap.

2008 bielsa tinto - (garnacha) very fresh and refreshing, almost free.

forja de salnes - rias biaxas
2006/7 goliardo loureiro - too $$$ for me in the store but as good loureiros as i have ever had (admittedly, not a huge sampling...).

vinos de terrunos (wines made specifically for jose by diff. people)
2008 la milla monastrell, jumilla - just alive and dirt cheap, great balace between fruit and earth.

2006 mas de negra priorat - (samso/garnacha) priorat that doesn't taste like it is from california!!! who knew...

guimaro - ribera sacra
2007 mencia barrica - just attacked you with flavor, while maintaining its composure. all tank, great purity.

padrina - majorca
2007 mantonegro - (70% montenegro, rest blend of callet, cab sauv, merlot, syrah) funky and different. i know nothing about the wines of majorca, i wonder if the night clubs are as good as this wine...

los bermejos - canary islands
(everything here was good, and so unexpectedly so. a bit pricey, but the following 2 are worth every penny)
nv bermejo espumoso - (malvasia) elegant without being stuffy. makes you want to be on a cliff overlooking the ocean with fresh seafood.

2008 bermejo malvasia seco - hit me everwhere i wanted it to. all i have to say is simply alive!

primativo quiles - alicante
2003 raspay tinto - (monastrell) oxidized, funky, fabulous. if you like lopez, park yourself here.

2008 cono 4 - for the price, the wine of the tasting. at $11 on the shelf it is perfect.

hermanos pecina - rioja alta
(i only discovered this grower recently, but now it is for me at the top of the rioja food chain)
2008 pecina joven - old school. not trying to impress you, just honest, delicious rioja!

2003 pecina crianza - everything you want in a riojha at this price. a bit more oxidized style than joven.

1999 pecina reserva - a nice stylistic counterpoint to lopez, equally good, but different. loooove. wait to drink, though.

1998 pecina gran reserva - wow. wait to drink, though.

bodegas montebaco - ribera del duero
2005 montebaco crianza - nice, easy, tasty. deep but not heavy. again, alive. under $20 and perfect where it is.

federico - ribera del duero
2007 roble - honest and wonderful. who know spain made wine of this quality at this price!!! at a slightly higher $$ point than the cono 4, but at this slighly loftier perch, wotd for me.

2005 crianza - even better

2004 reserva - even better, needs time...

clos de noi - montsant
2007 - (samso or carignan) nice, riper style. more fruit, in a really good way.

zaumau - priorat
2008 zaumau tinto - again, who knew great priorat weas available at this price! yay!!!

musva - valencia
nv sparkling muscat - simple and easy w a little bit of rs. a no brainer.
 
I went to the Terroir event so I imagine this was just the 'natural winemaking' subset of the portfolio.

Argeso (Sanlucar de Barrameda)

Bodegas Argeso San Len Manzanilla Clasica (6 yr)
Nice and penetrating with intense, salty savor. Love the freshness here. Some interesting musty minerality and decent acidity for sherry. Really nice. Now I just need a plate of boquerones.

Bodegas Argeso San Len Manzanilla Reserva de Familia (8 yr)
Considerably more almond-y complexity and length here. Less saline and bright freshness, lower acidity. Really interesting wine, perhaps more of a contemplative drink than an accompaniment for pinchos. A bit of warmth from alcohol.

Bodegas Argeso Amontillado
Nutty, marmalade, rock candy aromas. Intensely concentrated and mouthfilling. Great intensity and wonderfully nutty and dry, austere. Unfortunately it shows quite a lot of aggressive alcohol on the back.

Forja del Salnes (Ras Baixas)

2008 Forja del Salnes Ras Baixas Leirana (Albario)
Super fresh green aromatics with greengage, herbaceous green pea, mandarin. Lots of bright green-peachy fruit and very tart citric acidity. Very light in body. Not really working for me tonight; this really needs warmer weather for full enjoyment.

2007 Forja del Salnes Ras Baixas Goliardo Caino
Friendly aromas of green tobacco leaf, bright red carbonic cherry fruits. Fresh palate with juicy acidity and lighter concentration. Simple red cherry fruits, a little too much carbonic froot for my taste. Friendly about sums it up.

2006 Forja del Salnes Ras Baixas Goliardo Loureiro
Nose has some reduction with blue fruits, dried herbs, tobacco. Juicy acids, with nice blue fruits and a crushed stone sort of minerality. Nice grippy finish without being particularly tannic. I quite liked this in a Loire cot sort of vein.

Seoro de P. Pecia (Rioja)

2008 Seoro de P. Pecia Rioja Joven
Stinky, reductive/animale nose. Classic style, with dried herbs, soft red fruits, really quite nice and complex for a joven. Very soft and ready to drink per the style. Turns savory on the finish with dried herbs, pepper. Tasty, easy.

1999 Seoro de P. Pecia Rioja Reserva
Lifted aromatics of coconut, strawberry liqueur, dried herbs, rock candy, old wood. In the mouth, flavors of strawberry liqueur and tobacco with fine minerality and great lift from the acidity. American oak flavors take over on the back of the palate with spice, coconut and vanilla. Medium concentration and length. Didn't care for the nose (too much coconut) but I liked this quite a bit otherwise.

1998 Seoro de P. Pecia Rioja Gran Reserva
More elegant nose than the '99 Reserva, with mostly game and smoked meat notes and some old wood. Very complex palate with aging meats, tobacco, strawberry liqueur and darker fruits and some coconut. There's some palate sweetness due to the intense concentration here but it finishes dry. Very long. Really impressive.

Primitivo Quiles (Alicante)

2003 Primitivo Quiles Raspay Alicante
Monastrell. Nose of soft red fruits, wood spice, cough syrup, orange peel and red fruits. Somewhat oxidized; smells a bit like a ruby Port. A sherry, aldehydic note takes over immediately in the mouth but there's also a lot of fig and dark fruits and spice. Some warmth from alcohol is apparent. Not really for me, but interesting.

NV Primitivo Quiles Raspay Alicante Gran Reserva (Fondillon Solera 1948)
This is wild stuff, a blended-vintage monastrell made using a solera system started in 1948. Intense sherry nose of walnuts, toffee. Striking palate: nutty, mineral, quite austere, dark-hued yet with very little fruit. In style this is somewhere between tawny Port and an amontillado sherry, if made from black grapes. Good length. Not something I'd seek out, but respect.

Later a friend gave me a sip of 2003 Puffeney Arbois Rouge Vieilles Vignes. Lovely! So fresh and vibrant. I can't believe how good this is for the vintage. More evidence that Puffeney did better in '03 than in '05.
 
Primitivo Quiles, Montebaco, Argeso, Los Bermejos are my favorite wines in the Pastor portfolio. (I love Bermejo dry whites - the Lanzarote volcanic terroir is amazing.) I'm no great fan of Pecia, but hey, I'm a modernist spoofulator, so what do I know.

By the way, a pedantic ampelographic note: the sams/carignan synonymy is just a stupid mistake by the Priorat appellation, which wanted to get rid of the traditional 'carinyena' name and found an old Catalan name, 'sams', to replace it... but completely goofed. Sams is actually the same as France's cinsaut, whereas carinyena/cariena/mazuelo is France's carignan. There are wines in Catalonia that have both sams and carinyena in the blend, like Torres' Grans Muralles.
 
Seems like it's taken forever, but some of the Jose Pastor wines are making their way to the Chicago market (if they've been here and I've not known, shame on the marketers/retailers; or shame on me, whichever). Sitting here drinking the '08 Benaza Godello which led me to unearth this thread. This wine is really lovely. Mid weight, lemon/green apple with a not-too-unpleasant bitterness at the back, plus a bit of minerality. All for roughly $12?!? As Scott says above: fucking impressive. And, I don't know, I smell octopus in this wine. I mean, that's a bit crazy, but I just want to eat some lightly grilled octopus with a squeeze of lemon while drinking this. Nice.

The two others that I've found here recently are the Temera Ribeira Sacra Alodio which I also really liked and the Clos des Noi which was a bit too fruit forward/thick for my tastes. Definitely glad to see the Jose Pastor wines making it to Chicago though.
 
Jos Pastor's fans in the US, take notice: it seems that his lineup will soon include the provocatively named Canopy wines, which sound like an Australian mass-produced shiraz but are actually small-production grenache and grenache-syrah wines of great honesty and terroir from the unpublicized Mntrida area, just 40 miles southwest of Madrid. They're made by the Fernndez brothers (who run Asturianos, one of Madrid's best bistrots) and Alfonso Chacn. Young people with a lot of passion. And their own sense of humor. (One of their wines is called Congo.) I shared a bottle of Chteau Rayas 2000 and one of La Via Escondida 2007 with Jos Pastor this summer, and we concluded that the Spanish grenache (from 50 year-old vines at an altitude of 2,500 feet) was right up there with the fabled CdP. No flashy Mediterranean fruit bomb at all, by the way. Have no fear.
 
You can take it as a benchmark measure for a Spanish grenache from a forgotten area that only produced trite bulk wine until less than a decade ago. But I'm rather confident that La Via Escondida 2007 wouldn't be out of its league against a great wine like Rayas 1989 - although comparing wines made 18 years apart is of course complicated.
 
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