At the Club de Enófilos meeting of 26 October, we were given an insight into the latest developments at the bodega.

Underground gallery with inbuilt tinajas, Celler del Roure

The winery and owner-winemaker Pablo Calatayud have continued to develop and mature, moving from cramped beginnings in a warehouse to the more spacious surroundings of an old bodega where wine had been made from at least the early sixteenth century, and probably a lot earlier, until the interruption of the Spanish Civil War. This new (old) bodega had another surprise, a series of underground galleries complete with 97 tinajas (earthenware jars) mentioned in a document dating from the early seventeenth century.

Spurred on by the keen enthusiasm of Pablo’s father, the bodega has begun to experiment with making wine in the clay tinajas. After all, it’s how it was done for hundred of years until oak casks swept all before them in the nineteenth century.

The experiment began in November 2009 with Celler del Roure’s first white wine. They bought some 40,000 kilos of Chardonnay and began to make wine in a handful of tinajas, using blocks of ice to maintain coolness during fermentation. It so happens that Pablo got married in 2010, and he was persuaded to include this white wine in the wedding celebrations after only four months in the vessels, and it was a hit.

There are only some 4,000 bottles of this wine , and in honour of its fledgling condition it has been named “Cullerot” (tadpole in Valencian). It is a light gold wine, clean and appley, straightforward in style yet full and, of course, with a refreshing absence of oak.

We tasted Les Alcusses 2007 and Maduresa 2006, both fine wines, though the cedar, spice and power of the grander Maduresa rather overshadowed its junior partner when drunk side by side. As I said earlier, the bodega is always tinkering. This 2007 is the first vintage of Les Alcusses to include no Tempranillo in its blend.  From 2009 the red wines will include some tinaja-made wine in the blend. There’s plenty of scope, as half of the earthenware vessels take 2,400 litres and the other half 900 litres.

Les Alcusses is named after Bastida de les Alcusses, the historic Iberian settlement near Celler del Roure where archaeologists have found grape seeds and wine sediment in vessels from around 2,400 years ago. Talk about recovering tradition.

I don’t know if pregnancy had anything to do with their opening surprise last night, but we were asked to blind taste a white wine that was described as “experimental”. I thought it might be a white wine made with Bobal, the signature red grape of Utiel-Requena and Pagos del Molino, but it was too floral and delicate for that.

It was very pale and clear, and tasty and refreshing, if a tad diluted. I wondered if they were doing something clever with a local white variety like the Tardana. To our collective surprise (all save one member who had spotted it) they announced that it was a Moscatel and Macabeo blend (50% each) with negligible 0.5% alcohol.

The removal of alcohol is done by some modern process I didn’t fully understand that does not involve heating the wine, hence retaining more aromas (the Moscatel is there among other reasons to boost the aromatic levels). But there it was, a virtually alcohol-free wine. The market they have in mind is made up of drivers, pregnant women, diabetics (the wine is made with sweetener rather than sugar and has only 6 calories per 100 ml). If the remarkable success of alcohol-free beer in Spain is anything to go by (Spain is the leading consumer in Europe where “cerveza sin” accounts for 15% of the market), they’re on to a winner. It was released in early 2010. As it was a blind tasting, I never caught the name, but I’ll find out.

The other two wines were more familiar. First up was “Fussión de Bobal” 2005 (that is how Fussión appears on the label, despite the temptation to write Fusión). As the name suggests, here we have more than just Bobal. Much more, with Bobal, Merlot, Syrah, Petit Verdot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc all in there. The Bobal is from a century-old vineyard and is the only one of the varieties aged in oak for this wine. It was hefty, chewy wine, for me the tannins rather overpowered the fruit. It may have been the cold weather, but I found it a bit unapproachable and lacking in roundness. Perhaps given a bit more time and a few degrees Centigrade I’d warm to it more.

The last wine was a beauty. Arras de Bobal 2004 is 100% Bobal, again from very old vines. They express their passion and ambition for the grape with this wine, only making it in good years (so don’t bother looking for the 2006 and 2008 vintages in future).

This Olivastro 2008 (it means oleaster and was how a particular bit of the family vineyards was referred to) showed us another side of the Bobal. It is produced by the just-established family winery, Bodega y Viñedos Carres (website forthcoming), and is the first vintage from José Luis Torres Carpio, another of the young winemakers that the Club does such a good job of bringing to our attention. The wine is made from grapes from the small vineyard tended by his father and grandfather before him (and his grandfather’s father and grandfather before that) in a corner of Requena with the wonderful name Casas de Eufemia (some 160 inhabitants).

What this amounts to is that José Luis has not only known these vineyards since he was a toddler, he has also absorbed the knowledge of his forebears. Though trained as a winemaker, of course, it was wonderful to hear him talking about how he combines his training with what these fifty-year old vines “say” to him. He uses no fertilizers nor does he irrigate. He uses no yeasts in the wine beyond those that appear naturally. He is drawn to biodynamic and organic ideas, but as yet hasn’t decided whether he wants to align himself formally with those practices and go for certification.

In an expression of his love for the Bobal, he has decided to make a wine that maximizes the essence of the grape through carbonic maceration. Whole, hand-picked grapes are fermented in a dry ice environment before the lightest of pressings.

The wine rests in containers before being passed into oak casks. As before, José Luis doesn’t want to be constrained and categorized by the norms of the Denominación de Origen, so he doesn’t identify the wines as “crianza” on the label, though they spend long enough in oak to qualify, some nine months in the case of this first vintage.

The result is a wine that combines the immediate brightness of flavour and fruit (strawberries with, I thought, a touch of plum and that pleasanter-than-it-sounds hint of bubble-gum I often find in carbonic maceration wines), with the greater substance offered by the Bobal as compared to the classic carbonic maceration Gamays of Beaujolais. There is then the additional complexity from the wood ageing. Add in the Bobal’s famously intense colour, and there is a lot to this package. This is a carbonic maceration wine with knobs on, a wine that is not made to fade away after its first spring, as is often the case with this method.

Finally, the women of the club made a particular point of saying how much they liked the artwork on the label. I must buy a bottle and get a photo for this page, which shouldn’t be too painful at around 8 euros. There is something really enjoyable about being introduced to a brand new wine, especially one made with such craft and devotion. I wish this new bodega and its winemaker all the very best.

At the 3rd of November meeting Alfonso Sánchez Zahonero (sanchezzahonero.com) presented three wines: his Capricho 2006 and also the Capricho 2007 ‚Äì which will not be marketed until the spring of 2010 — as well as the 2006 vintage of his top wine, L’Essència. Alfonso looked both frighteningly young and impressively relaxed on the platform. He explained that he has no background in wine. He is from the small town of Siete Aguas, where his parents are both butchers, he was bitten by the wine bug, and after studying winemaking just got on with it.

He seeks out vineyards whose grapes he likes the look of and buys them from the grower, and then makes his wine in his parents’ garage (the term “garage wine” wasn’t coined without reason). He then does the rounds of bars and restaurants selling his wines direct. His youthful verve makes it sound so straightforward, and I salute his entrepreneurial spirit.

The Capricho wines are a blend of Tempranillo, Syrah and Merlot, and aged in oak for about nine months. Both the 2006 and 2007 were lighter in colour and alcohol (12.5%) than is often the case with wines from the Comunitat Valenciana. It was an honest red, with an acidic freshness. It wasn’t really made for cold November nights, but their refreshing lightness would have been just the thing on a hot day. Alfonso sells the Capricho at about 3 euro, and you can’t say fairer than that. Look out for the 2007 from April or so next year.

The L’Essència is a grander wine. The 2006 that we tasted was awarded a gold medal at the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles in 2009, no less. It is made from Tempranillo and Syrah and spends a little longer in oak and comes in at 13% ABV. I thought that this wine was a real thoroughbred, having substance and finesse. It echoed the lightness of the Capricho, but built on it. I recommend it highly. I note that it is offered by La Sucursal, the Michelin-starred restaurant in the IVAM (the Modern Art Museum) building, which says a lot. Felicidades Alfonso.