Alegre y Valgañón - Clarete Rosado, Rioja, Spain (2022)

TASTING NOTES

A pale, faded pink rosé colour, the nose and palate are deceptively robust. A delicate limestone acidity electricity permeates this wine with hints of geraniums and oyster shells. Dry, stoney and nutty - this wine is at once savoury, textured and graceful.

Roughly co-planted, macerated together for 3 days before pressing.

From 80yo bush-vines in the Briones municipality, grown in the foothills of the Sierra de la Demanda on pebbly chalk/red sand. Oscar Alegre & Eva Valgañón use the historical method of making pink wine, clarete, a method which involves the co-fermentation of both red and white grapes to create a clear pink wine. 

Complex stuff that demands to be enjoyed year-round.

While Oscar and Eva have only been producing wine since the 2014 vintage, their ideas developed over a period of years. They met while studying enology in Italy, and they eventually married.

Oscar and Eva minimize the use of wood. To this end, they started their project with a mix of used French barriques and demi-muids. Because French wood loses its flavoring ability much faster than does American oak, they’ve been able to minimize the flavor impact of the wood. And as the project develops, they hope to adopt longer aging and even bigger neutral barrels.