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“note: There seems to be a minor hullabaloo, that we can’t even put a word together, which might be true. So, in the meantime we’ll be stealing those words from other talented and brilliant “human beings”.” Salut i forca al canut, JP

Gangsta Blanc ( Barcelona, Part 2)

by the brilliant ANTHONY WILSON

“October 8: A second sunny, glorious day in Barcelona, a late-morning café cortado and churros, and another delicious lunch at Bar Pinotxo including braised oxtails and a huge sea scallop cooked with soya, sake, and African peppers. It was all fuel for the walk to a wine shop I had checked out online that seemed promising. A few days before my arrival in Barcelona, the kind Alice Feiring had sent me the shop’s web-address in a message whose subject line read: “you might want to know about this.” If you are a wine lover but feel that today’s Spanish wines have traveled too far in the direction of chewy, thick, and sweet, you too might want to know about this.

L’Anima del Vi is a small shop on a narrow side street just off the Plaza Rius i Taulet in the bohemian Barcelona neighborhood of Gracia. You would miss it if not for the bright, welcoming pink-and-green French doors with a sign above that reads “l’animà del vi, vins naturals.” Where the majority of wine shops in Spain seem to carry Spanish wine almost exclusively, this boutique sets itself apart by stocking a textbook collection of vin naturel from France. As you look around, you won’t find any of the current trend of fancy viños de autor; you’ll notice the lack of the fat, sugary, alcoholic, international-styled Ribera del Duero and Priorat tintos that would set you back $80 or more; and after perusing bottles of Burgundy from Philippe Pacalet, Faugères from Leon Barral, refreshing gamays and chenins from Thierry Puzelat and Olivier Lemasson, your gaze will come to rest on a fascinating selection of Spanish wines from growers you’ve likely never heard of.

The shop is owned by Benoît Vallée, a Parisian—and a musician (he plays vibes!) by education—whose existing passion for wine was strengthened after a stint working in the vineyards and cellars of Leon Barral (grandson Didier makes the wine now). Benoît’s charming Catalan wife, Nuria—also a musician (a violist) and his partner in the business—inspired him to make the move to Barcelona. Their shop is the only place in Barcelona, and probably one of the only places in all of Spain, where you can find a representative selection of wines from small Spanish producers who farm responsibly and vinify naturally.

Benoît and I tasted some of his recommendations and I bought a mixed case of favorites for the band to enjoy on the bus.

Bubbles were always the first bottle we opened upon entering the bus after a show and before a long night’s ride. Our stash from Benoît’s place included a lovely, non-natural Cava, “Ingenius,” from Julia Bernet, and a delicious non-dosage vin petillant naturel, “La Perle Rose,” from vigneron (and son of Champagne grower Jacques Beaufort) Aymeric Beaufort’s Domaine de L’Ocre Rouge in the Rhone valley: one of only two French wines I bought that day. The other was “Ose,” a beautiful, dry white wine from Roussillon producer Domaine du Matin Calme. Incredibly aromatic, a bit cloudy, from 50 year-old vines of Grenache Blanc, Muscat, Grenache Gris, and Carignan blanc, and sulfured only at bottling, it was delicious.

But it was the Mendall “Abeurador” (100% macabeu) and “Mal de Sofre” (100% garnatxa blanca), two white wines from Laureano Serres, that were our favorites of the bunch. Serres has a very small (4 ha.) property in Tarragona, and his label is called Mendall. Benoît Vallée wrote me recently that Serres’ “white wines are for me a concentration of Spain. In 2002, he forgot to put sulfite in one of his tanks. First, he was able to see for himself that it’s possible to make wine without sulfites; second, he realized that he preferred his wine like that. And since that year, he decided courageously to make wine without sulfite even if he possesses really limited means of wine making.”  Bassist Ben Wolfe and I drank the bottle of Mendall “Abeurador” in the late morning during a long bus ride: perfect breakfast wine (if your breakfast consists of things like ham, turkey, boquerones, and fresh bread with good butter or olive oil), with a vibrant golden/orange color, achieved by extended skin contact, like a red wine, and according to an email from Serres, “a wine with medieval character…really a wine from another time.”

And how can I do justice to the spectacular “Mal de Sofre” garnatxa blanc—the “Gangsta Blanc” as we fondly came to refer to it? Our only regret was that we hadn’t purchased more than two 375ml bottles because this delicious, oxidative, orange wine blew our minds. For this wine, Serres harvested a small, basically abandoned, plot whose plants were suffering from “powdery mildew” because they hadn’t been treated with the customary Bordeaux mixture (copper sulfate mixed with lime). Since the vines’ sickness was due to not receiving sulfur, he named the wine “Mal de Sofre.” I can’t help noticing the (admittedly loose) connection between the risk-taking and resourcefulness that went into the making of Serres’ wine (a wine that exists totally against the odds) and a portion of the slang definition I found online of the word “gangsta” (from wiktionary): “slang, adj. Exhibiting the traits or demeanor associated with the high-risk lifestyle of urban street-thugs and hustlers.”

Much more eloquent and on point, though, is what Laureano Serres himself said about this stunning wine in an email to me: “The mal de sofre viens de vignes malades [comes from sick vines], and has the power of nature in the sense that even in the worst moments nature can make life.” “