Live life with fine Spanish wines

Over the past few months I keep coming across a white wine called Naia in the newspapers, in wine magazines and online. One of my daughters is called Naia and, as it was her birthday recently, I thought I would investigate this wine a little further.

My daughter is called Naia because, as we live in the Basque country, we thought a Basque name would be nice and it’s one of the easier Basque names to pronounce for our non-Basque relatives and friends. (It rhymes with “tie a” as in “Tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree”!). My husband and I feel that it has a nice ring to it and its meaning is “desired” or “wanted”. Or, at least that’s what I thought until I started to look at online dictionaries and see that it may actually mean “wave”. I’ve asked a few Basque-speaking friends and they all agree that it does, in fact, have the first meaning. Either way, we like it. (more…)

MAPA, the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fishing and Food has announced Ribera del Arlanza and Tierra Del Vino de Zamora as Spanish wine appellations. The two regions are now official wine D.O. (denomination of origin).

Being in the Wine biz I, of course, immediately after having read this ran to my map of Spanish appellations to try to figure out where these two regions are situated. The D.O. Ribera Del Arlanza is situated some 40km south of Burgos city. The main grape variety (95%) is …tempranillo (tinta del pais), not so surprising. Then the second most planted grape is Garnacha (2%). There is a little bit of Mencia, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petit Verdot and Albillo for their rosé wines. For the white wines they use Viura, but very little white wine is produced. (more…)