Garnachas of Spain

Being an amateur of good wines, I have been developing in the last twenty years my own tastes for specific kinds of wines, and for specific types of grapes. And this within the widest inculture regarding the scientific side of wineries, or on methods and other information of connoisseurs: mine is a simple love, I love the wine or not, but don't ask me to describe with with complicated expressions: I could not do it.

So, in this context, I became years ago a lover of a kind of grape which is quite typical of Spain: it is called Garnacha, and apparently it became very popular around 1850, when the epidemy of filoxera invaded Spain and many grape plants were killed, then replaced by more resistant varieties, like Garnacha.

In the past I have been very impressed by some wines made by Garnacha, even if the general reputation is that they are not very good, and many consider them to be less than soft enough in the mouth. Yet I could not avoid to become enamoured by its body, its consistent flavours, and overall a charm of good old wines without trendy manufacturing.

So I received in awe the gift made by my brother this year: a box of wine from a project entitled "Garnachas de España", illustrated above. When I opened the box, I discovered this project is the labour of love from an enologist , R. Acha, who is also enamoured of Garnachas, and who has been persistent enough to find out a number of very old Garnacha plantations around Spain, and to contact the owners in order to make wines in some of them.

The results are three different wines, all made with Garnacha 100 %, but with different features in each case. R. Acha made a documentary, available here, which widely describes the background and making of the project Garnachas de España, and is in my opinion well worth to watch. Thanks to Dennis, I found a version of the video with subtitles in English:

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