Ever heard of it? Well, I must admit I had. Txakoli, a white wine from the Spanish Basque country, has been in my wine repertoire for some time. Never had it risen so high though, as this week when we were in the Spanish Basque country, just a few kilometers past San Sebastien. We happily "quaffed" a bottle of TXOMIN ETXANIZ a txacoli from Getaria in a wonderful local restaurant called Iribar.
Txakoli, is known for being a "fresh" crisp local basque wine, great with sea food, that's how I remembered it from my days at "Coaltrain Wine and Liquors", a great wine store in Colorado Springs. In fact, it's thanks to Peggy McKinlay, Jim Little, and Jeff Frees, all of Coaltrain, that I learned anything about wine at all. I distinctly remember a conversation with Peggy in which she asked me if I could explain to her the difference between Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc. At the time I couldn't !!! Boy, have I come a long way since then. After all these years, it's still to Peggy and Jim and Jeff that I owe all of my gratitude, for without them, I might still not know the difference between these two grape varietals. They gave me my first job in the wine business. In the end, I guess I owe it all to them, for without them, I could have very easily been led astray.... I still consider myself today, a Coaltrain alumni.
After lunch, we decided to try to go buy some of
the wine. I asked the waitress in my best Spanish and she understood me, more or less, that I wanted to know where the winery was. She warned us that there may not be anyone there, that often they were out in the vineyards in the afternoon. We wanted to try anyway. We drove up the steep road leading out of the village and into the countryside that overlooked the Atlantic. In fact, the roads were so steep they almost gave me vertigo. After asking some locals along the roadside, we found the right driveway that led down to the winery. There were several wineries around, but not one had a sign. I guess they're not really interested in selling direct from the winery. Once there, we saw a few cars in the driveway, but not a soul in sight, just a fairly mean-looking boxer. We sort of made peace with him while we walked all around the place looking for someone, some sign of life, but no luck. Nobody was around, either that or they were hiding from us! We got a good look at the vineyards though, pretty mind-boggling really. They are all trellised so that in order to pick them or prune them, you would have to reach up to do the cutting, not to mention the steep, steep hillsides. I just kept thinking to myself, thank goodness we moved to southern France where the vines are nice and low!
Ever seen them? Well they are easy to miss. The little bud suddenly bursts and there are all these little tiny feelers with little white puffs at the ends that make up the flower. (How very scientific of me, I know! Click on the picture to see more detail.) There is also a sweet fragrance that they give off, very subtle, but once you notice it, there's no mistaking that the vineyards are in full flower. It's amazing, you go away for a week and suddenly everything has changed. Both the Syrah and the Grenache vines are in flower, the Mourvèdre is, as usual, a bit behind. There's an old adage in Burgundy, that harvest will be 100 days from flowering. If you count 100 days from today that means we'll be harvesting around September 9th...we'll see if it holds true for the south!
