Vega
Sicilia did it ... in Champagne it was usual practice (and still is), Artadi
did it (at least about plots, and many others) ...
We have
gone from "Pagos Viejos" to "Carretil" and from "Krug,
Bollinger or any other style" to the champagne of the plot, vintage and
specific producer ... and I love it, don't get me wrong.
It seems
that the prevailing discourse is, to a certain point, the search for a
personality (beyond the “quality” concept, which could be too abstract), in the
conjunction of a plot, terroir in a narrow sense, within a vintage concrete ...
what "nature" gives in that year. I share this completely: personality,
difference, unique character, beyond a "quality" than who is the
"judge" that rules (subjective).
But there
is another part of the discourse that, if so, I do not share at all and in this
case, it would be like a kind of search for a certain "purity".
Because ... what is purity?
I wonder
why there is not a producer who, in search of HIS OWN interpretation of what a
“wonderful” wine would be for him/her, does not mix vintages, parcels,
varieties and whatever. An equally IRREPETIBLE alchemy, the composition of a
human being, interpreting that same "nature".
There are
obvious reasons, let's say "identity", related to things, entities,
such as that in Champagne they wanted to achieve a stable style and without
surprises and they also had the financial capacity to do so, while the common
wineries had (and have) than to produce and sell "each vintage" for
their subsistence, since all this "philosophy" requires serious
investment decisions: spaces in the winery, technical and physical means,
planting decisions in the vineyards and a lot of other things ...
But there
are also "philosophical" reasons and I base them on the fact that we
are "pendular" and on "photography" you have the main
"culprit" for all this: black / white, beautiful / ugly, good / bad
dichotomies, Parker / crispy wines ...
The
"monovarietal" culture is very "New World" (also in the
"Old World" if we think in "the North"). In both, the
devastating new tendency to express the personality of a single plot, what some
have called "bottling a landscape" and they both seem wonderful, I
don't try to "choose" between one and the other trends, because
everything enriches and increases the wonderful complexity of this world of
wine.
I speak
precisely of enriching, considering the "vintage" as one more
variable, to create "that specific wine" that is in the maker's mind,
but not as in Champagne, with the intention of consolidating a style, but
creatively.
There is
nothing more "Mediterranean" than "the blend" (of varieties
and plots) and we must not forget that the Mediterranean is the cradle of wine.
Chave is one of the fervent defenders of the blend of plots, saying that "strength" is in that mix and not in the individuality of each one of them ... that in this way "man" bends "nature" .. I would say that this is how he decides to "interpret" ... by the way, Parker once said: if there was an Olympus of wines, Chave would be Zeus.
Making a
joke: when "women" accuse us (men) of being unable to do two things
at once ... they are right.
