 Are all Spanish wines big, brawny and oaky? I don't know. Find out in this video. Welcome back to Exotic Wine Travel. I am your host, Matthew Horkey. Welcome back to the show. I'm coming to you actually from an awesome place in southern Croatia, the Dalmatian coast, the Villa Lavanda. We'll be staying here for a while, shooting a lot of videos. I'm really excited, but we're not talking about Croatian wines today. We're actually talking about Spanish wines today. The stereotype about Spanish wines are they're red, they're big, they're ripe, they're brawny, and they're oaky. That's kind of the stereotype. Think about some big Rio, modern Riojas, Ribera del Duero. Those wines are big, high in alcohol. Some for me can sometimes have too much oak, but there's a lot more in Spain besides that. You got to think about this. Spain has the biggest area planted, vineyard plantings in the world. Spain, Italy, France, they're right at the top in terms of wine production, worldwide in terms of countries. They're kind of switching positions depending on the year, depending on the vintage. Those three countries actually make up 75% of Europe's wine and that's pretty significant. There's a lot there to discover, a lot of regions, a lot of grape varieties. We're going to taste some kind of off the beaten path wines. I am really excited. You ready to get started? Great. Oh, yeah. Oh, thanks. You too. Let's get started here. The first we have is the Bolega's Casa de Sol. This is La Fronja, Casa de Sol from Rias Vazas, my pronouncing that right. Alvarino, a grape known also as Alvarino in Northern Portugal. It's so funny. I love this. I love this estate. We tasted their Alvarino 10 months on the Lise Barrow Fermented a couple of weeks ago. You loved it, right? Oh, yeah. It was incredibly exciting wine. This is their basic wine. 2018 Alvarino is a grape that I think you should really seek out. It's really undervalued grape. If you like re-slinges, this is something that you should check out. Rias Vazas is an area that looks like the Duro. Really steep slopes on the river. I want to get there. Alvarino, Menthea are the kind of the main grapes that are planted. Enough of me blabbering. Let's taste this wine, shall we? Ooh, exciting, exciting nose. For me, it gives a key for a lime. A lot of key for a lime. If you have Thai food, Asian, Southeast Asian food, you're going to know what that smells like. Lemon, kind of a lemony of citrusy. Seawater as well. Going to get a seawater note. Maybe even a little bit of sand. Let's give this a go. Electric wine. Tons of acidity. Very similar to in structure to a re-sling with this limey acidity. No kind of petrol notes. Just pure clean citrus fruit. Maybe even some white pineapple. This is pretty darn exciting, especially I think this is a wine that retails in Spain for under 10 euros, which is I think exceptional. For me, their top end wine was a hardcore 91 point wine for me. This is about 89 points. I think this is exceptional. This is the perfect shellfish wine. You tasted this before me. What do you think about this? Sure. I really like the freshness, citrusy feel. It has this very nice sensation, structure on the palate. Yeah. Beautiful wine. It's a wine I want to sip on all day. Big, big, big, big fan of that wine. Let's move on here. We have the Leyenda del Paramon, the El Esprindes. 2018, this is a rosé, as you can see, a darker rosé made from the grape Preto Picudo. Now I have not had this grape ever in my life from Castilla y León. So right in the heart of Spain, they also make a red that I haven't tasted yet. I've got a bottle, I haven't tasted it yet. I'm super excited. All I know about the grape is produces wines of dark color. Obviously, this is a dark rosé. This is not a pale rosé, almost looking like a light colored red wine. No idea about this grape. Let's give this a sniff. So, you know, for Shireen, for instance, she likes a rosé. She wants watermelon, strawberry, strawberry type notes. This, I'm going to go hardcore, more raspberry, brambleberry, even peppery. It's kind of a little bit more complex gastronomic rosé actually. Really interesting. You want to smell this? Color's a bit brownish. I like darker rosés in general. Of course, there's rosés. It's so funny. I didn't like them for a long time, but I've been getting into them lately. I've been really enjoying them. I wasn't fond of the notes. The notes are quite brusy fruit type, but the palette's quite nice. Like you said, here's a lot of weight on the palette. More like a little bit similar, oxidated. Definitely a full body and stuff. I have to check if this is even barrel age. I mean, it's definitely made, it's not a fresh rosé. It's got complexity, a lot of earthiness, a little oxidative notes, kind of like ripe raspberry notes. I personally like this style of rosé. Are you liking this? Not so much? I think this is definitely going to be for a different type of crowd for me, kind of like an 87, 87 point type rosé. I really enjoy it. I don't think it's an expensive wine, so it's worth seeking out. This is a cool show. I have a funny story. I was on a trip with wine journalists last year, actually. One of the guys was from Spain. His name was Finn. We were talking about Spanish wines. Spain is an area that I love. I love the culture. I love the wines, although I don't know them professionally as well as some of the other countries. He was explaining about the new wave of Spanish wines, how things are changing. They're not big oak bombs anymore. There's a lot of nuances, indigenous varieties. He talked my head off for like an hour. We were on a bus ride, and I looked over at another friend on the trip. His name was Paul, and I said, Do you like Spanish wines? He'd been listening the whole time. He just looked at me, because he's British with a slice sense of humor. He said, No, I don't like new oak. I'm on the finger. I was like, No, that's exactly what we're talking about. No, it's not the case anymore. Okay, that's a funny story. The next wine we have. Thanks for, thanks for entertaining me. We have the Bicardo. This is the Vino Tinto Experimental 2018. This is made in Toro, an area that's known for big, huge, oak-y, fruity wines out of Tempranil. This is not classified as a Toro, even though it uses the grape from Toro. Old wines, minimal intervention type of wine. I am super excited to try this. I've seen them hipster bars all over. It's got this kind of cool label where he's holding the two fingers up like, yeah. So let's give this a go. Six months in oak. What I found out is this is old wines, and it does use some whole cluster fermentation. Let's give this a sniff. Now with Toros, I get scared a lot of times. Sometimes it can just be all fruit and oak, which can kind of scare me. I'm hoping that's not the case with this wine. Let's see. Definitely not, definitely not the case at all. No trace of oak at all, even though it was aged in oak for about six months. Excuse me. I think black raspberry, black cherry type of flavors, earth, pepper. Wow, really, really nice nose. Actually, fall leaves, pretty complex. It was 13% alcohol. Let's give this a go. Toros can lack a city sometimes. This is highest city. Medium body, blind. I don't think anybody could ever pick out this as a Toro because it's not just all fruit and oak. It's a balance between fruitiness and some earthiness. Wow, hold on. Wow. I am really, really enjoying this. It acts more like a medium-bodied, like a kind of blouse, Frankie, San Giovese, kind of those medium-bodied red type wines. I'm a big fan. This is the type of wine that's cool because I could give it to a variety of people. This is the type of wine that probably sells in hipster bars all over the place, natural wine bars. Then you can kind of give this wine to somebody that some of the hardcore guys would say, I don't like natural wine. I hate that concept. They would enjoy it as well. It's not funky. It's not pickled. It doesn't have this pickle flavor. It's just a delicious wine, really, really well done. Do you want to taste this? Do you want to taste this again? Really nice. Really good stuff. This is epic. What do you think? For me in this style wine, minimal intervention type of style wine, this is a hardcore 90 points for me, maybe even 90 plus. I really enjoy it. I'm glad the show didn't disappoint. All types of wines that are not typical Spanish oaky wines, these were actually all sent to us by a distributor called the Spanish palette. I'll put their link in the description box. They work with small production artisanal wineries. Yeah, they showed strong today. Good job. Anything you want to add on Spanish wine? So check it out. Remember, there's a lot of wine out there, so you got to keep drinking adventurously. Expand your pal, expand your mind. Don't be afraid to try new things. Spanish wines are a great place to start because they come in at lower price points. I think that these wines, I think all these wines are sub-20 US dollars when they're outside of Spain. In Spain, they can find them for a lot less. So guys, if you like this video, please subscribe to our YouTube channel, Exotic Wine Travel, and I will see you at the next episode. Hello, thanks for watching. Hey, you made it to the end. Make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, click the bell so you know when new videos are out. If you like content like this, check out our Patreon page where you get some behind the scenes exclusive content. Thanks for watching. Cheers.