From: Rueda, Spain
Varietal: Verdejo
Tasting Notes: Pale yellow, brilliant with reflexes green emerald. Fresh and intense nose of great complexity that develops as the wine breathes, showing minerals notes together with some cinnamon hints, vanilla, and honey, that remarks its barrel aging with its lees. It is fresh and tender in the mouth with a rounded finish, and its fleshiness and unctuousness incite us to keep enjoying it.
Pairing: Seafood, salads, this wine will stand up to hard-to-pair ingredients like tomatoes, asparagus, and vinaigrettes. Grilled fish tacos with mango salsa would be perfect, as would a tofu and veggie stir fry in tamarind sauce.
About. Rueda is a historic Spanish white wine zone named after the unprepossessing town which straddles the main road from Madrid to León in Castilla y León. In the Middle Ages, vineyards flourished on this bleak Castilian plateau and cellars were hollowed out of the limestone under the town, but after phylloxera ravaged the zone, Rueda went into rapid decline. The high-yielding palomino grape was used for replanting, a move that in this case was justified since the main local styles were fortified wines in the image of sherry.
For much of the 20th century, the local Verdejo grape was Rueda's sleeping beauty. It was awoken in the 1970s, when Bodegas Marqués de Riscal of Rioja recognized the area's potential for dry white wine and sold a fresh Rueda white alongside its Rioja reds. Verdejo became such a fashionable grape in Spain, with tons of character, that its total plantings increased threefold between 2004 and 2011 to just over 18,000 ha/44,460 acres. Its distinctive blue-green bloom, which presumably inspired its name, is Rueda’s pride and joy (and helped stave off a challenge for primacy from imported Sauvignon Blanc, with which it is often blended). Wines produced are aromatic, herbaceous (somewhat reminiscent of laurel), but with great substance and extract, capable of aging well into an almost nutty character.
