This is a
modest translation of the interview with Ángel Espejo published in yesterday’s
Diario de Jerez.
What brings you to
Sanlúcar de Barrameda?
I’ve come to taste the wines of the Marco de
Jerez and a few others from Andalucía, and while I’m here I’m going to present
my new book “Los Nuevos Viñadores” (Planeta Gastro) as part of the series of
tastings at La Taberna der Guerrita. But I’m usually here every year and
combine work with sharing some wines and fun with my friends.
 |
| Luis Gutierrez with Robert Parker (foto:decantalo) |
Awarding Parker points
is a great responsibility and not devoid of pressure. How do you do it?
My job is to write articles but they have to be
accompanied by tasting notes and scores. For me it is very important to
understand what is happening, speak with people, visit the vineyards, the
place… because in the end you understand the wines when you walk in the
vineyard. In the end it all boils down to a number, the score, which for me is
a hierarchy of how I see the quality of the wines. People think I make a list
of numbers, but if I did that I would only be working a couple of days every
couple of months, and it’s not like that. I’ve just been in Galicia, and only
the tasting notes and explanations of the bodegas would fill another book.
When you started with
Robert Parker Sherry didn’t exist in the guide…
When I started I saw that there had never been
an article on Sherry in the Wine Advocate and I was the first to write one. A few
Sherries had been tasted for the publication but out of context and without
getting to the bottom of the wine which for me is important. I am an engineer
so I am logical in my thinking and I like to understand the how and why of
things. And wine is much more than what goes into the bottle. It is about
traditions, culture, countryside, the place, the gastronomy… For me that is all
information and the articles I write for the Wine Advocate are very similar to
what I have written in the book. I believe people are much more interested in
that than in numbers which are just a simplification in this hierarchy of wine
quality.
Is it a job or a way
of life?
Wine is not a vocation, it is a passion, it’s
mad and takes up all your time, and those of us caught up in this madness are
happy because we love what we are doing.
“Los Nuevos Viñadores”
is a book about wine in which you talk very little about wine.
Yes. It is a book of stories, human stories,
about people, about who they are, where they live and what they do, but the
idea was that someone like my mother, who knows nothing about wine, zero, could
read the book. I didn’t want to write a technical book because I think we put
people off when we talk like that and make things too complicated and
exclusive. It annoys me when people say they don’t drink wine because they
don’t understand it yet they eat meat without understanding it.
Why this obsession
with making the world of wine so complicated?
You either like wine or you don’t and you can
complicate it as much all you like because it is a super- complex, infinite
world. The more you learn the more you realise how little you know. It is
important that we try to simplify it all and bring wine closer to the people
because we are creating a sort of ghetto, a wine sect, we are isolating
ourselves. We have the lowest per capita consumption in Europe and that is
dreadful.
How do you feel when
you come across a wine with 100 Parker Points?
I always say that it is a wine which
accelerates the heartbeat, which really brings out your emotions, it drives you
crazy, it sets your head spinning. And after trying it I get to searching
everywhere to buy some, whatever it costs.
 |
| Armando Guerra, Luis Gutierrez in Guerrita shop (foto:spanishwinelover) |
In your book the land
obviously attracts you.
I believe that the diversity we have in Spain
is very important and in the book I show that diversity and how the wines
reflect it. Wines could all be made the same which I don’t like at all, and the
more you get into it the more you want differences and personality, which is
what the market wants right now. Spain has a tremendous advantage because we
have so many indigenous grapes which we have been undervaluing and now we are
recuperating them. Tempranillo was standardised in Spain and brewed up all over
the place, but how are you going to produce a Ribera del Duero in a subtropical
zone with white grapes? It’s been tried of course and was a disaster.
What do we lack?
We lack belief in what we have, and the big
step forward is that we are beginning to believe. We have always had some sort
of complex, like improver grape varieties. What happens if yours are worthless
and you need something to improve them? It’s crazy. It’s about not making all
wines the same but about making them different and adapted to each place. It’s
happening in the Canaries, in Galicia and Jerez. Right now there is a
tremendous acceptance of these different wines in Britain and the United
States. What’s happening in Jerez is amazing, and for me Equipo Navazos has put
Sherry back on the world stage. People wonder why what they are doing,
something as simple as selecting wines and demonstrating how they really are, has
not been done by anybody before?
 |
| Eduardo Ojeda (Estevez & Equipo Navazos) features in the book (foto:diariodejerez) |
THE PAST IS THE FUTURE
In his new book, “Los Nuevos Viñadores” Luis
Gutiérrez (Ávila, vintage 1965) examines 14 Spanish wine regions to offer a
human profile of the growers who, in his judgement are making some of the best
wines in Spain. “Robert Parker’s Man in Spain” is presenting his book in Sanlúcar
tonight at a tasting at Taberna der Guerrita along with a tasting of the wines
of this new generation of winemakers, many of them young but some of retirement
age, who share his passion for wine and understand it as a way of life. It is a
passion born of a respect for the soil, the vineyard and its traditions which
they are recuperating to show in their wines that the past is the future.
