The Vina Albali winery was founded in the 1950's by Felix Solis Fernandez in a small bodega (winery or cellar) in the Valdepenas region of Spain.
As the business began to expand beyond the local area to encompass
sales to restaurants in Madrid the whole family became involved in
winemaking. Overseas exports began in the late 1960's with the Solis
brothers (Felix's sons) travelling far and wide to to promote their
wines. Further expansion followed in the 1970's and with the aid of a
grant from the Spanish government a new winery was built in its current
location on the Madrid - Andulucia road. Subsequent refurbishment has
made it into one of the most modern winery's in Spain, with a bottling
capacity of some 6,000 bottles per hour. Vina Albali now have bottling plants as far away as Tenerife and Shanghai as well as warehouses in France and the Czech Republic.The
actual Vina Albali vineyard, covering over 340 hectares, is situated
near the small town of Pozo de Serna some 8km from Valdepenas. Here the
timely seasonal rains and day - night
temperature differences exceeding 30C (during the summer) give the
ideal environment for the grapes to reach optimum maturity each year.
Tempranillo (pronounced tem-prah-NEE-lyoh) is an important red wine
grape native to northern Spain where it's widely cultivated. Also known
as Cencibel in some areas, Tempranillo is mainly grown in the Rioja
Alavesa, Rioja Alta and Penedes regions. Tempranillo is often blended
with other grape varieties, and it is one of these blends which goes to
make what is perhaps Spain's best known red wine, Rioja. Outside of
Spain it's cultivated in Argentina, Portugal and increasingly in California. On first smelling
this wine I got a strong impression of ripe strawberries. A second
sniff confirmed this, but this time a hint of redcurrant crept in with
raspberry jockeying for attention too. Red berries are definitely the
overriding aroma of Vina Albali Rosado Temperanillo. The first taste of this wine actually caused me to gasp, it was
very very tart. Not too unlike a Portugese rose (Mateus Rose'
for example). This dissipates very quickly though and an intense
fruitiness shines through with our friends from the sniff test coming
to the fore; ripe stawberries,
redcurrants and raspberries all put in an appearance in the taste
contest. What struck me most about this wine though was the aftertaste.
It's a wonderful combination of butter and vanilla and has the legs of
a marathon runner with an ever so slight acidic kick at the end to
remind you that it is alcohol you're drinking after all.- Ciao
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