Cheap Wine
There’s a little wooden sign hanging in my cellar that reads, “Life’s too short to drink cheap wine.” But when is a wine cheap? Last week, José Antonio Cruz invited me to the launch party at the Vinoteca in Pamplona to celebrate Bodegas Familia Belasco winning the 2008 Grand Golden Bacchus award for their Marco Real Reserva de Familia 2004. What a magnificent wine! A bright cherry red, complex fruits and vanilla spices on the nose with sweet, ripe fruits balanced by firm tannins, long and full in the mouth.
Roser Girbau, the oenologist, talked of her efforts, the labour and expense involved in its creation; hand-picked grapes from their own vineyards, manually selected, fermented in state-of-the-art, temperature controlled stainless steel tanks then aged in new French oak. It is easy to understand how a wine with this massive investment behind it can beat off competition from 1683 other wines in a blind tasting to win Spain’s top prize. I’m pretty sure anyone with enough money can craft a wine to win competitions but how much would it sell for? I was astonished to hear the venerable and proud Don Juan Ignacio Belasco reveal that the Marco Real Reserva 2004 will hit the shelves next month at around €10 a bottle. This is a wine created for consumption not competition. What a bargain!
Juan Ignacio went on to say that there were wines costing over €200 a bottle entered for the Grand Bacchus competition. My wine tutor, the much revered Arthur Bone used to say, “Ask yourself two questions when tasting a wine. Do I like it? Can I afford it?” Well, I, for one, cannot afford €200 for a bottle of wine no matter how much I may like it. “But is that expensive?” asked Juan Ignacio. He went on to say that in his opinion, a wine is only expensive if it fails to meet his expectations; a €10 wine can disappoint and thus be a waste of money whilst a €100 bottle could astonish and turn out to be a bargain.
I was astonished by the Marco Real.
Toodle Pip!
