Caliza is the value wine in the Marques de Griñon Dominio de Valdepusa line.  Dominio de Valdepusa is the estate wine appellation or vino de pago located in Toledo province to the southwest of Madrid.  The estate specializes in very ripe, big wines from mostly French varieties, though they are starting to work with Graciano, a Rioja grape.  The estate has been very important in the evolution of Spanish wines over the last 25 years, and has been innovating in terms of grape varieties and technologies in the vineyard.  I’ve previously written posts about the wines and the winery, but the Caliza was not part of the line-up back then.  Previously, the estates wines started at about 19€, topping out at about 45€. I’ve always loved these wines but often found them a little pricy.  Now the winery has come out with a lower end wine, the Caliza, that is much more reasonably priced at 12€.  The Caliza, made from Syrah and Petit Verdot, is soft and full, with wonderful black fruit.  It is not super complex, but has surprising freshness for such a hot weather wine and has quite a long finish, with very ripe tannins.  I really think it is a lot of wine for a good price….and it’s perfect to drink this year.  I don’t love the label though…it looks like a bland version of Didier Dagueneau’s original Silex label…also the shape of the stone looks a little like the outline of Africa.  Read on for more info on Caliza 2005.

The Ciudad Real area of La Mancha produces some interesting wines; in particular there are some really interesting Syrahs and Tempranillos.  Many times the wines are really good value though prices are rising.  Typically these wines are easy drinking, glugable reds….high alcohol but with gobs of sweet attractive fruit.  The best can have some complexity and subtlety, with better equilibrium between fruit, alcohol, oak, and acidity.  The worse are out of balance:  too much alcohol, often over-ripe fruit and lacking acidity….or even worse over sharp acidity from enthusiastic acid rectification.   The wines of La Mancha are hot weather wines, big wines that often resemble new world wines from similarly hot regions.  They are big wines, even the most complex and elegant wines, and many of my Spanish wine tasters find them overwhelming.  On the other hand, many of my foreign groups love them!  I tend to drink them chilled with barbecues in the summer….when I first came to Spain I drank them more frequently at home, but I got a bit burned out and lately I’ve used them solely in tasting.  Always a region to re-visit as change and improvement is constant. 

The Denominacion de Origen (DO) Manchuela, or wine appellation, is located in eastern La Mancha, close to the beautiful town of Cuenca.  This is one of the newest DOs in Spain, formed from the natural break-up of huge La Mancha into more coherent appellations.  Much of the production is still mediocre, but there are more interesting wines being made these days. 
One of the pioneers in the area is Finca Sandoval, a winery which makes consistently excellent wines in a challengingly hot climate. The winery was founded in 1998 and is the personal project of a well known Spanish wine critic, Victor de la Serna.  There search for quality includes traditional open-top fermentation vats with manual punch down…the wines are neither fined nor filtered.  Most of the grapes are local:  Bobal, Monastrell, and Garnacha, but they also have some great Syrah, using clones from Chateauneuf-du-Pape.  There are only two wines:  Salia is a great entry-level option at only about 12 euros. See below for my comments on their top wine:  Finca Sandoval. 

We just visited The Dominio de Valdepusa Winery in Toledo Province and were really impressed! The vineyards is where the focus is…these are some of the most high tech vineyards I ever seen! They have sensors that detect every miniscule movement and change in the vine….years of analysing this data allows them to know with precision the exact water needs of their vines. They believed that it is very difficult to get good phenolic ripeness without over-ripe fruit and too low acid levels in hot viticultural areas. Their careful use of technology actually allows them to get a perfectly ripe grapes with good acid levels…this gives top quality, intense, yet fresh wines that age well.

This is a great example of some of the great value, high quality wines coming out of La Mancha at the moment. Ezekiel Sánchez-Mateos, owner of the great little wine store, Reserva y Cata, makes this wine. He has a wonderful personalized selection of wines in his store and on the days he is there, he can guide you really well, and he can also help you in English! Ezekiel runs one of the few stores in town, where each wine is individually selected with care. Check out the website at: http://www.reservaycata.com/