Grilled sweet corn and Roka Akor lamb cutlets

Rodinia hosted the Vintae winemaker Carmelo Cámara at Chicago’s Roka Akor last night. The food and wine pairings were perfect, starting with a butterfish tataki with the 2010 Spanish White Guerrilla Albarino and ending with robata grilled prime rib eye and 2008 Matsu El Viejo. The crowd of about 45 wine and food lovers had the opportunity to hear Carmelo describe each wine and ask any questions. And thankfully he was there to answer a dispute about whether the 2010 Spanish White Guerilla Chardonnay was aged in oak. It is not. It is only steal cask fermented giving it a very crisp taste.

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Daniel Schwedheim showing cava bottle

On the final day of winery tours in Spain we went to Vallformosa in Vilafranca del Penedès outside of Barcelona. We had lunch with Oriol Domenech Vidal, head winemaker, and Daniel Schwedhelm, Business Director. We tasted several cavas and ate a fantastic lunch.

Vallformosa is a owned and run by fifth generation of the Domenech family. The winery is next to the family’s house and surrounded by vineyards. The winery has a wine museum and a huge cava production facility.

After lunch we toured the winery. We saw trucks full of grapes getting dumped into the stem separators built into the floors. We toured a gigantic riddling room where the cava bottles are rotated upside down to collect all the yeast at the in the neck of the bottle. The bottling line took uncapped the cava bottles, pulled out the yeast that collected in the neck, corked the bottle, and put labels on the front.

Manuel swirling wine in a proper wine tasting room.

On the third day we rested and went to Valenciano and ate at lunch at Fuenmayor and drank QP and Hacienda Lopez. The food was fantastic.

The fourth day took us to the new Bodedga Classica winery in Haro, the Rioja Wine Region. We tasted wine in a “proper tasting room”, toured the winery and headed to the hills for a authentic Spanish lunch of been and ham soups, bread, and, of course wine.

The proper tasting room looked more like a hi-tech chemistry lab in an expensive high school. Everything was white and each wine tasting station had a sink with faucet and a small lamp. The sink was for spitting, of course. And the light was to see the wine color. I did use the light, but did not use the sink to spit out any of my wine. The new Vintae grenache wines we tasted were too good for the sinks.

After, we toured the winery with the Vintae head winemaker, Raul Acha. He took us on the upper deck of the steel casks. Some had the lids open and we could see the bubbling fermentation of the juice. Then he took us to a very large room where they were aging wine in oak barrels. Raul explained that every two months they take all the wine out of the barrels, cleaned the barrels and put the wine back in for more aging. He told us they use the barrels for about six years then sell them. After six years the barrels are better for scotch or whiskey than for wine.

We ended this tour with lunch at the base of some mountains eating a tradition Spanish country lunch. The view was gorgeous with the hills of medieval towns sticking out in the valley. That night we enjoyed the Fiesta San Mateo by drinking wine and eating tapas.

Rodinia, Vintae and company in Spanish vineyard in Valles de Sadacia

On the second day we woke up early and went to Castillo de Maetiera vineyards in the and winery to try Spanish white wines of Valles de Sadacia (Vino de la Tierra) in the Rioja region. We toured the vineyards that overlooked the valley and mountains of the area. We ate a breakfast of smoked ham, chorizo, cheeses, and bread. And of course we drank Spanish white wine made at the Castillo de Maetiera winery from grapes grown in the vineyards we toured.

Carmelo Cámara one of Vintea’s winemakers gave us a tour the winery and let us taste some white wines – Libalis Dry and Libalis – from the stainless steel vats. The wine wasn’t quite ready, yet still delicious. We then toured the castle and had a tradition rural Spanish lunch of a been soup and eggs and vegetables, and of course we drank various wines – Libalis, Hacienda Lopez, and QP. The food was fantastic, the setting remarkable, and of course the wine was delicious

November 8. 7:00 pm

$60.00/person includes dinner and tasting

Limited seating

EMAIL RSVP to M.Pulido@rodiniawines.com

Winemaker Caramelo Cámara

DINNER WITH CARMELO CÁMARA

His adventure with wine started when he was child/ He is from Haro where the wine-growing culture has been deep-rooted for generations. He took Vocational Training in Agriculture and Food Sciences and subsequently a Bachelor in this same field. He started with Castillo de Maetierra in 2002, temporarily leaving the company and giving priority to his studies. During leave of absence he worked at several wineries such as RAMON BILBAO, FLORENTINO DE LECANDA or LA BODEGA COOPERATIVA VIRGEN DE LA VEGA DE HARO, where he had the chance to work with prestigious oenologists and further his education until he was ready to resume with Vintae.

Raul, Vintae Winemaker, showing grapes from old vines.

Toro, Spain. As soon as we arrived inMadridwe drove to Toro to check out the vinyards around the Matsu winery. The first vines we saw were old vines that escaped the Phylloxera epidemic that destroyed most of the vineyards in Europe in the late 1800s. The vines were not terraced but in bunches. These are grapes and vineyards that produce theMatsutrio of wines, El Viejo, El Recio, and El Picaro. Raul, the head winemaker at Vintae, told us that these old vines were more than 100 years old. He had us taste the grapes from the old vines and the grapes from newer terraced vines. There was a noticeable difference in the grapes. The old vine grapes tasted mellower, while the new vine grapes were bright.

Next we went into the winery. The most interesting part of the wine making process for these Toro wines, was how they are aged in oak. Raul told us that he ages the wines in three different types of oak barrels. The wine ages in French oak, Eastern European oak, and American oak. We tried what is to be the El Viejo wine from the three different oak barrels. They all tasted similar, however my preference was for the wine from the Eastern European oak. Ultimately they will all get mixed together. The wine from all the different oak barrels gets mixed repeatedly during the oak aging process. All the wine from the barrels is mixed together when the barrels are cleaned several times and finely when the wine is finished and mixed before bottling. The Matsu wines are some of my favorite Spanish wines because of the oak barrel aging and the idea that they come from old vines.

Vineyards around the Bodega Classica Winery.

Spain in five days, four wineries, two wine companies, one wine festival and more glasses of wine than I can count. We tasted wines from Rioja, Toro, Ribera del Duero. We tasted Tempranillos, Granachas, and various blends. We kicked the dirt around some of the oldest vines inEurope, vines escaping the phylloxera epidemic that destroyed most of the vineyards in the late 1900s. We saw the grapes that will become the wines we love from Vintae and Vallformosa.

We started in Madrid and went north to Toro for a tour and lunch, then to Logroñio, which became our home for four nights during the Fiesta San Mateo (Saint Matthew Festival), then off to Vilafranca de Penadès for a cava tasting and one night of rest, then 150 km/hour toMadridthen sweet homeChicago. Over the next several blog postings, I’ll be chronicaling Rodinia’s recent trip toSpainin late September.

Bodega: Casas Del Bosque
Appellation: Casablanca Valley, Chile
Type of wine: Chardonnay
Varieties: 100% Chardonnay
Alcoholic strength: 13.5%
Harvest: Harvest was carried out by hand between March 16 and April 8 2009

On arrival to the winery all grapes were subjected to a whole cluster selection,de-stemming, and then an individual berry selection before loadingthe grapes, by gravity, into pneumatic presses where they were oh sogently squeezed. 80% of the juice was racked to stainless steel tankswhere it was cool fermented. The remaining 20% was racked to 2nd useFrench oak barrels where it was warm fermented.

Tasting Notes
Fresh pear and peach aromas dominate, backed up by hazelnut and smoke. Citrus and mineral notes are bolstered by afresh acidity.

El Viejo is the consequence of wating until the nature works quietly. It has a great aromatic intensity, with ripen black fruits aromas, well integrated. In mouth shows a great corpulence, with round and mature tanine.

Tasting: A deep cherry color, high lamina, with violet colored notes in its border. Thanks to the barrel aging the wine acquired a very intense nose with mature black fruit aromas, well integrated with the toasted, spiced and smoked notes. Corpulent in the mouth with very mature and round tannins that give its sweetnes. In the long and persistent aftertaste appear once again mature fruit perfectly assembled with the roasted character of the wood.

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El Recio is a red wine coming from a selection of 60 to 100 year old vines of extremely limited production, naturally cultivated following the biodynamic techniques.

Tasting: This is a corpulent wine also having a lot of finesse, with an intense nose having notes of chocolate, black fruits and vanilla. In the mouth the taste is striking, being predominantly round and silky, very unctuous with subtle hints of the glycerine. Touches of fruits linger in the after taste as do mineral notes. This is a full body wine yet at the same time very easy to drink.

Tech Sheet | Shelf Talker