MAS LA PLANA
“Wine is like a small child. You know it is going to grow, but you have no idea whether it will be for the better or for the worse.”
With these words Miguel Torres, scion of Spain’s oldest and most respected wine-making family, raised his glass to the assembled company and bid them good health.
If you leave out the great families of Jerez such as the Domecq, González, Terry and Osborne, there are surprisingly few wine dynasties in Spain. The vast majority of the ‘Conde de this’ or ‘Marqués de that’ labels are rented by wine producers from their noble title holders (the Riscal and Murrieta labels are an honourable exception, as is Griñón). The Torres family has been in the Spanish wine business for a century and a quarter, and is about as close as one gets to wine royalty in this country.
I suspect many of us will have cut our vinous teeth on Spanish wine made by Miguel Torres SA. Their Viña Sol is one of the best selling Spanish whites, and no restaurant wine list is complete without it. Sangre de Toro is another mass-market product, selling huge quantities all over the world.
But if anyone believes that these two wines are typical of Torres’ vast selection, they would be mistaken, for here we have one of the most progressive and forward-looking wineries in Spain. Torres wine production figures are mega: 24 million bottles annually, with 30% going for export, making Torres the largest Spanish exporter of DO wines. 130 countries import their brands.
A Torres started making Spanish wine in Penedés, Catalonia, in 1870, and by 1900 the Torres wine brand was firmly established. When King Alfonso XIII visited the Torres bodega in 1904, luncheon was served inside a 500,000 litre wooden butt – not for the claustrophobic. The winery was partly destroyed during a civil war air-raid, and 1956 saw the launch of Viña Sol, Sangre de Toro and Coronas.
In 1979 the family acquired a vineyard in Chile and in 1982 another in the Napa Valley, California.. Between Spain, Chile and the USA, the grape varieties are about as comprehensive as one can get: Parellada, Garnacha Blanca and Tinta, Cariñena, Cabernet Sauvignon, Moscatel, Gewürztraminer, Reisling, Merlot, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Monastrell, and Sauvignon Blanc.
The latest acquisitions are in the fashionable Priorato region, Toro and Ribera del Duero, and Torres has established a joint-venture in China (the Zhangjiakou Great Wall Torres Winery Co Ltd), as well as trading companies in Sweden (Miguel Torres Sverige AB), and India (TT & G Trading Private Ltd).
If wine ever ran in a family’s blood, this is the family. Miguel Torres, the current President of the Group, and the vice presidents, Juan María Torres and Marímar Torres are fourth generation. Marímar runs the Californian winery, where the Marimar brand of chardonnay and pinot noir are produced at Russian River Valley.
The lunch has been outstanding and Marisquería Santiago, on the Paseo Marítimo, had excelled itself for the occasion. Miguel Torres does not visit Marbella often, so this is a special occasion. The walls of the private dining room are lined with glass cases containing some of the greatest wines ever made (most probably well past their prime). The heat outside is oppressive, but in the air-conditioned inner sanctum all is peace and cool.
The Nerola Xarel.lo 2002 white served initially is a new Torres wine, made from old xarel.lo and garnacha vines, and is a successful attempt to produce a light fruity wine that gives the Galicians a run for their money. Production is limited, but the retail price is an acceptable 9 euros.
Penedés, in Cataluña, where Torres has the vast majority of its vineyards, is cava country. Yet Torres has never been tempted to enter the arena. Why? Miguel Torres patiently explains that the Spanish cava market is overwhelmingly price-driven, and the two mammoths, Freixenet and Cordoníu, have been locked in price wars for decades. The upper end of the Spanish cava market is well served by some excellent products, but the sales volumes are tiny. Remember that 95% of cava consumed each year in Spain is drunk during the festive season, and most of that is semi-seco.
Actually, Torres does make a cava, but in Chile. Miguel Torres tells me that it is very good and says he will send me a bottle to try.
The next Torres wine to be uncorked is Viñedo Don Miguel, a 2001 chardonnay from California. Six thousand cases is nothing, but this is all the Maríimar Torres Estate in Russian River Valley produce, under the eagle eye of Doña Marímar herself. But just thirteen acres of chardonnay is enough to make one of my favourite white wines – anywhere. The tasting notes, generally to be ignored but in this case bang on, mention ‘a touch of honey and toffee, with hazel nuts and marzipan…..’.
What about vinos de pago? These are the new rage in Spain, aimed at convincing wine drinkers that France does not have a monopoly on terroir, that nebulous perception that supposedly gives the great wines of Burgundy and Bordeaux that je ne sais pas quoi, being something in the earth of a particular vineyard that guarantees quality – decade after decade. Many great Spanish wineries are concentrating on making their own versions of vinos de pago (pago being another word for finca), or wines demonstrating their terroir origins.
Miguel Torres thinks it is all a load of je ne sais pas quoi. He comments, quite reasonably, and without getting too excited, that there have always been vinos de pago in Spain, so what is all the fuss about? This may be a veiled criticism of the large wineries that in some cases do not even have their own vineyards, but buy in grapes from local producers. Torres has always differentiated exquisitely between every tiny patch of land it grows grapes on, and wine is never allowed to be blended with produce from other sources.
On to the reds: Manso de Velasco 2001 from Chile is a full-blooded and full-bodied cabernet sauvignon that stands no argument. Curiously, in view of Miguel Torres’s comments earlier, it is described as a vino de pago, but this must be a way of imposing some sort of order on Chile’s vast hectares of vineyards, most of which have yet to earn any sort of meaningful reputation. At €23 retail this is certainly not a typical Chilean product, but Torres has a policy of not selling that country’s wines at price levels that would put them in competition with most of the other producers there.
This is followed by Torres’s flagship red wine, from the tiny DO area of Conca de Barberà, where Torres is the only major wine maker: Grans Muralles 2000. A mix of 5 grape varieties and aged for 18 months in French oak, it has loads of tannin that will gradually reduce over the years, at the same time guaranteeing a long cellar life, 10-15 years being the best guess. It is a monster of a wine, but then at €85 the bottle, it should be.
Where will Spain be in world ranking of wine producers in 10 years time? Miguel Torres does not react as negatively as he probably feels to such an impossible question, but does say that there are far too many wines made in the country. Order has to be established, or the waves of new world wines will sweep everything before them. And it is not just a question of price, more of discipline, an element that has been imposed by the Torres family on its own produce for decades.
The sun is heading for the horizon with indecent haste, but there is still time for a glass of Vendímia Tardía 2003, a sweet reisling designed as a dessert wine for serving very cold. It is delicious. This followed by the brandy bottle, Jaime I. The brandy was originally launched at the end of the 19th century as a homage to Catalan architect Antonio Gaudí, and the current bottle was designed by Hiroya Tanaka, one of Japan’s leading architects.
