Description
This is a collab wine project with Modal Wines & one of their winemakers at Azul y Garanza from Navarra, Spain. ‘Spirals’ kicked off in 2018 with a series of bespoke cuvées made with a different one of Modal’s growers each year, and they have donated 100% of the profits to a different organisation every time.
Made with Graciano grapes, the grape variety that is often used as part of the blend in top-end Rioja. But here we get to see it what it can do on its own. It’s soft, velvety & smooth with black fruit, plums, smoke & hints of spice all balanced by lots of freshness. A great all-rounder on the table this winter, but perfect with a fatty cut of beef.
Spirals 06 is called ‘Oriol’ named after its 9-yr old (!) winemaker. Modal Wines visited Azul y Garanza in Navarra in February 2021 & a ‘secret’ wine was pulled out of the cellar, a soulful Graciano from 2018. They loved the wine & were shocked to find out that it had been made by Maria’s son Oriol who was only nine years old at the time, as part of a school project.
Oriol had a hand in every aspect of the wine, from the vineyard work & harvesting to footstomping & fermenting, checking densities, tasting the juice, racking it into barrel & eventually bottling it. He even made the decision to make it start to finish with zero additions for maximum purity.
Following that visit in 2021 they decided to give it another couple of years of bottle age & it is now singing. Medium bodied, heaps of black fruits & the earthy, foresty notes of age, all in a structured but balanced frame.
Organic farming.
Minimal intervention winemaking.
No added sulphites.
11.5% abv / 750ml
