2010 martinsancho verdejo

Indeed one of the very best Ruedas (as usual) in what was overall a disappointing 2010 vintage in the region: too hot. Other top ones (100% verdejo type): Finca Montepedroso (impressive new estate owned by Rioja's Martínez Bujanda family), Marqués de Riscal, Vinos Sanz's Finca La Colina.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Martinsancho at one time one of the very few people still producing 100% Verdejo, since the Consejo Regulador for Rueda was pushing the uprooting of Verdejo in favor of replanting more internationally marketable varieties like Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc?

Again, this could be bullshit, but I want to say that cuttings for a large amount of the Verdejo planted now in the area came from the Martinsancho vineyards.

VS, can you clarify any of this back story?
 
originally posted by Morgan Harris:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Martinsancho at one time one of the very few people still producing 100% Verdejo, since the Consejo Regulador for Rueda was pushing the uprooting of Verdejo in favor of replanting more internationally marketable varieties like Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc?

Again, this could be bullshit, but I want to say that cuttings for a large amount of the Verdejo planted now in the area came from the Martinsancho vineyards.

VS, can you clarify any of this back story?
Click to expand...

Yup, see this thread for details.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by Morgan Harris:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Martinsancho at one time one of the very few people still producing 100% Verdejo, since the Consejo Regulador for Rueda was pushing the uprooting of Verdejo in favor of replanting more internationally marketable varieties like Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc?
Click to expand...
Actually - no. You have a couple of different developments mixed in there, but the chronology is wrong.

You have to go back to the phylloxera scourge, which hit Spain late (around 1900). In many regions, but particularly the northwestern quarter of the country, replanting was done under ruthless considerations of yield, or of sheer convenience, and the varietal makeup was drastically altered. Mostly, native white varieties were replaced with Jerez's rustic, high-yielding palomino (in Rueda and throughout Galicia), while native red varieties in Galicia were replaced with garnacha tintorera (alicante bouschet).

By the mid-1970s there were just a couple of hundred vines of godello left in Valdeorras and precious little verdejo in Rueda. These and several other (mostly Galician) varieties were on the brink of extinction. Sherry-like 'pálido' wines made under flor yeast from palomino were the most successful products in a then-dormant, backward Rueda region.

But a breakthrough occurred 35 years ago when the big Marqués de Riscal firm decided it wouldn't make white wine in Rioja and, looking for a more interesting area, searched around Rueda and discovered in La Seca (the best terroir there - huge CdP-like limestone rocks) that a small grower, Angel Rodríguez Vidal, owned a tiny (under one acre) vineyard called Martinsancho, planted over 100 years earlier with pre-phylloxeric verdejo vines.

Riscal's chief winemaker Paco Hurtado encouraged Angel to plant 10 more hectares with cuttings from Martinsancho, then in turn he got cuttings from that plot to create Riscal's vast network of verdejo vineyards. Much of the current verdejo surface in the region originates from that crucial genetic reservoir.

In just 15 years, most of the palomino had been replaced with verdejo. Riscal wanted to introduce another variety, in addition to some viura/macabeo brought from Rioja, to give the region a little more varietal diversity and make it possible to produce several types of wine, and the Bordeaux-trained Hurtado then brought sauvignon. (A little barrel-fermented verdejo is now made by Riscal and others, but over 95% of the region's production remains true to Riscal's original idea four decades ago: crisp unoaked whites.)

There are three sub-appellations: Rueda Verdejo (the top one), Rueda Sauvignon and plain Rueda (for blends). But the supremacy of verdejo is unchallenged: vineyard surface in the region is 9,140 hectares of verdejo (83%), 1,017 ha of viura (9.2%), 686 ha of sauvignon (6.2%) and 170 ha of palomino (1.6%). Then there is a small surface of red grapes (the Rueda DO now admits reds too.)

As for Angel Rodríguez Vidal, now 82, he made his first vintage under the Martinsancho brand 30 years ago, in 1981. He sells very little of it in Spain, as he has been very successful on international markets, particularly the US. He still says he is happy for two momentous decisions in his life: first, his refusal 50 years ago to uproot the Martinsancho plot as his father wanted him to (because its yield had become too low); then, his co-operation with Riscal, "a company which turned so many poor Rueda growers into prosperous ones."
 
Thanks, guys. We have too few good vignerons making their own wine in Spain (as opposed to co-ops or large companies), and it's always good to bring them to the fore - and hope their numbers grow.
 
For Victor:

"The occasional dry fortified, oxidized Dorado wine is still encountered, although these wines are a dying style in a region energized by freshness, and are not often encountered outside Spain."

This is a quote from the Guild of Sommeliers study guide on Rueda. Do such wines still exist? Does anyone make a good one? Have you heard of them?
 
A little pálido and dorado (fino and amontillado would be the comparisons) is still made, including some from verdejo. It's interesting to note that 'blanco de La Nava', or old-style Rueda, remains the favorite white wine, sold in bulk, in bars and inns throughout the Cantabria region, about 100 miles north of Rueda, on the Atlantic ocean.

There, you can still find a couple of companies like Hijo de Martín Sánchez, in Cabezón de la Sal, which for 150 years has been aging La Nava wines under 'flor', Saccharomyces veils as in Jerez. The cooler, humid climate of Cantabria makes this easier than in Rueda proper. The wines are pleasant, like fatter, less refined versions of dry sherry. I see on their web site that Martín Sánchez also ages the only 100% verdejo 'pálido' now made.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top