Before each Sunday Night Supper Club, we gather to sample wines and make decisions on which ones will best represent the dinner theme and complement the menu. The Spanish white wines for our most recent dinner presented a surprising challenge. In our first round of tasting, we sampled eleven wines – two sparkling, two Sherries, and the rest still. The wines came from several different regions and were mostly made from indigenous varietals, in other words, grapes that are considered Spanish rather than international varietals such as Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc. We were certain that we would find five wines that we could all agree on, but we could not. On to round two and another dozen wines!
One of the wines that I had selected thinking it was primarily Macabeo was the 2007 Bodega Pirineos Mesache White. We decided to not even open this wine because it was actually a blend dominated by non-Spanish grapes: 30% Chardonnay, 35% Gewurztraminer, and 35% Macabeo. Also called Viura in the Rioja, Macabeo is one of the varietals used in making Cava.
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