When I went to give a talk about fashionable grape varieties at the International Wine Symposium in Marbella in June (don’t laugh - it was very well organised and well-attended, and my mother-in-law enjoyed her 80th birthday treat enormously), I realised what a relatively narrow range of indigenous grape varieties Spain has in comparison with, for example, Portugal, France and Italy. Although I have heard a few theories, blaming Franco, the Moors or the co-operative mentality, I have yet to be fully persuaded by any argument as to why this is so.
This is partly perhaps why I so enjoyed a bottle of Marqués de Alella Clásico 2003 on our last night in Marbella, at a restaurant whose extremely kind sommelier was trying to tempt me with all manner of heavily oaked Spanish Chardonnays and even a Viognier. Alella is a development-shrunk wine region north of Barcelona which depends for its white wines on the Pansa Blanca grape, the local name for Xarel-lo, the definitively Catalan grape used extensively and not always deliciously for Cava. I have to take my hat off to Parxet, the company responsible for Marqués de Alella, for managing to make such a fine, sophisticated wine from this grape. In my experience, Xarel-lo can be marked by a certain vegetal, not to say cabbagey, coarseness, but this is refreshing, aromatic rather lemony white wine by anyone’s standards. Acidity is marked but tastes completely natural, and counterbalances the low residual sugar of 7g/l well. This is a wine to enjoy with shellfish or indeed a wide range of fish dishes.
Parxet own or control about 400 of the 600 hectares of vineyards that remain of the Alella DO, which includes some interesting, cooler inland sites on the west of the Cordillera Catalana. Many of the vines are grown on a local granite called saulo which apparently helps enormously with water supply during the unpredictable growing season. Try this unexpected Catalan speciality, one of the first Spanish whites to be fermented in stainless steel and still keeping up with the pack for individuality. There is an oaked version but I cannot imagine it is superior.
According to www.winesearcher.com you can find this wine for $10 a bottle at Wine Cask in Santa Barbara, although UK retailers tend to ask more, just a tad too much in my view. Bennetts of Chipping Campden and Butlers Wine Cellar of Brighton list it at £6.99 but Adnams want closer to £8 a bottle. Tut tut.