The May Edition
Say hello to the May Edition 🤝
🇪🇸 A perfectly paired selection for the Spanish wine and cheese lovers 🇪🇸
Connecting with great friends producing wonderful products in Spain was an extra special one when putting this box together, so we really hope you enjoy what’s to come!
Whack the playlist on with the button below and let’s get going.
Wine Tasting
How to taste wine
The first step of assessing wine is looking at it
Wine snobs like to talk about the legs of wine. In all honestly, this is a bit of a waste of time.
The wine legs (or tears of the wine as the French refer to them) can give an indication of the alcoholic content of the wine. But it’s so difficult to be accurate with a reading from legs,
So we say just read the label!
For appearance, we only ever find it useful to note something if the colour is completely out of the ordinary i.e. it’s a really dark rose
The next step is to smell your wine.
Swirl the wine in the glass. Looks poncy but does release some aromas, and helps it not just smell like alcohol.
Broadly, smells can be broken into three categories.
Primary Aromas: grape-derivative and include fruits,
herbs, and floral notes.
Secondary Aromas: from winemaking practices and easiest to find in white wine. Examples include beer, cheese rind, or nuts.
Tertiary Aromas: from aging in bottle or oak. Normally savoury. Examples include roasted nuts, spices, vanilla, autumn leaves, tobacco, and leather.
Start broad. Is it fruity?
Red wine? Think of red, blue, and black fruits.
White wine? Think of citrus, orchard, or tropical fruits.
Once you’ve identified a scent such as citrus, you can now think if it’s more apple than lemon or more orange than lime.
This is all pretty personal to your own nose.
The same principle can be applied to floral and herb scents, but in our opinion, not many people can tell you the specific scent of geranium.
If you can detect herbs or floral notes, it’s a great start.
Wine Tasting
How To Taste Wine
Finally you get to actually taste the wine. Funnily enough though, tasting is predominantly to detect the structure of the wine.
Body: Think how differently skimmed milk, full-fat milk and cream coat the mouth.
Acidic: How much does it make your mouth drool?
Tannin: An annoying word but an easy one to detect. Imagine sucking on a teabag and how dry it would leave your mouth.
That’s tannin.
Dry or sweet? Tannin can trick you to think there’s no sweetness in a wine. Stick the tip of your tongue in as the best detector of sugar (probably not the done thing to do in a restaurant).
The final part of tasting a wine, is to come to a conclusion about it.
What type of wine did you just have and did you like it?
Was it too acidic or just a bit meh?
If you’ve just tried, for example, a Barolo, log that experience with that wine in your mind so that the next time you have a Barolo, you have a foundation of knowledge to judge it against.
The only way to really educate yourself is to drink more. Poor us.
Wine
Vi LOF Mencia
Name: Vi LOF Mencia
ABV: 13.5%
Grape: Mencia
Country and Region: Spain, Castilla y León, El Bierzo
Winemaking: Traditional
Tasting notes of Boysenberry, Strawberry and Mulberry
A real fresh summer’s red with a strong fruity nose and taste in the mouth which is impressive considering the low intervention. Lovely tannins.
Sweetness (dry to sweet) 1-5: 3
Acidity (low to high) 1-5: 3
Tannin (low to high) 1-5: 4
Body (light to full) 1-5: 3
Producer
VI LOF
The Vinos Lof winery was born out of a desire to turn the old family vineyards into something special.
Throughout five generations the family had acquired various plots throughout Bierzo, growing grapes that were traditionally sold to cooperatives.
In 2013 Hector and Victor (5th generation) transformed an old winery and started creating wines that represent the local terroir of Bierzo.
Only 4500 bottles were produced, so enjoy!
VI LOF is elaborated with the selected grapes from two of the family plots.
The plot of “Los Cobos” in the spot of “El Foco”. The clayey soil and the south orientation make a structured wine with red fruit flavours due to the easy maturation. The 70% come from this plot while the other 30% come from the plot in “El Toral”. Clay and boulder predominate in the area with west orientation and higher position so freshness and balanced acidity are detected from the wine from this plot.
Cheese 1
Manchego DOP, Semi-Cured
Age: 6 months minimum cured
Country + Region: Spain, La Mancha
Milk Type: Sheeps
Pasteurised: Yes
Strength Of Cheese (1-5): 2
Style Of Cheese: Hard
Texture (1-5): 3
The doors opened to the public a company dedicated to making authentic artisanal Manchego cheese, in the municipality in Villarejo de Fuentes. The village, located in the heart of La Mancha Alta Conquense has always enjoyed clean air and temperatures suitable for the practice of this profession.
Added to some shepherds of excellent qualities, his cattle get the raw material needed for such development. In fact, one of the economies that proliferated in the municipality, and from the Bronze Age, around 1800 BC C., was grazing, because in a hill near the town were located and useful cheese related to cheese production was closely linked to that tradition. Patron of the town itself retains name attesting that: “The Holy Christ of the Shepherds”.
Cheese 2
Zamorano
Age: 6 Months
Country + Region: Spain, Castilla y Leon, Zamora
Milk Type: Sheep
Pasteurised: No
Strength Of Cheese: 2
Style Of Cheese: Hard
Texture: 3
Produced since 1947 – milk is sourced from the herds of local shepherds for production.
It gets its characteristic flavour because of the breed of sheep – the small, scruffy Churra and the Castilian sheep.
Cheese 3
Valdeón Picos Blue IGP
Age: 6 weeks in high caves
Country + Region: Spain, Picos de Europa
Milk Type: Cows
Pasteurised: Yes
Strength Of Cheese: 2
Style Of Cheese:
Semi Soft
Texture: 2
The Picos Blue is a semi soft blue cheese created in the Picos de Europa mountains of northern Spain.
Bold and salty, the uniqueness of this cheese lies in the manufacturing process. This includes a long maturing in cold, damp cellars to produce a granular texture and blue mould filled cavities.
Charcuterie
The Deli Society Chorizo de León
The Deli Society partners with artisan producers that put animal welfare first.
Country & Region: Spain, Spain, Castilla y León, El Bierza
The Deli Society partners with artisan producers that put animal welfare first. Produced in partnership with a family run business, mastering their skills since 1945.
This chorizo is made using only 4 ingredients, then smoked over local oak over time to give its distinctive smoky flavours.
Produced in the same region as this month’s wine, the techniques and methods in creating this chorizo marry up perfectly with the profile of the low intervened wine.