I’m very encouraged to see young bucks buck the trend and start something. The Munster Massive, Maurice and Frank from Wine Alliance, have an eclectic and growing range of great wines. When I tried to spot what they were looking for in their wines I think what it really boils down to is that

They are looking for wines for their customers rather than looking for customers for their wines.

What do I mean by this? Bear with me for a tick. The greatest trick the recession ever played on us was for us to start equating cheap with value. It must be all those big red or yellow call outs from the supermarket aisles influencing us.

Beso de Vino MacabeoHowever, what the The Wine Alliance have shown is that with the wines they bring in, they can source wines to enable the retailers they supply to go toe-to-toe with supermarkets on price, while crushing them with quality.

If you’re still reading, well done you!

Here’s a great example of what I mean. It’s the Beso de Vino Macabeo 2009, from Cariñena in Spain.

The wine review bit

Viura or Macabeo (same grape, different names) is a little bit of an odd grape. You’ll sometimes get it as part of a blend in Rioja or with Verdejo in Rueda. You’ll also get it as part of a Cava blend, but it’s rare to see it tout-seule. It’s better as part of a choir than as a single.

But the Beso de Vino is well able to sing solo, and what a song.

Lovely zippy citrus to start to which is added a nice savoury edge and lovely creamy texture. When I think of the style, I think of the love-child of a Clare Valley Riesling and a nice creamy Chardonnay from McClaren Vale.

The geography lesson bit

Cariñena is in Aragón, one of those autonomous regions we don’t hear too much about, until they ban bullfighting and then they just go back to being autonomous, until they come together to win the soccer world cup under the Spanish banner. Anyway, there are many other very decent wines coming out of Cariñena, red and white, and I recommend you check them out. Beso de Vino is a great place to start.

The hyperlinks to more information

If you want to learn a bit more about the producer (set up in 1997), the vines and the product, then I suggest you take the information super highway over to the Wine Alliance site – a site that demonstrates what all importers should be doing – giving great detail, bottle shots and availability of their wines. Heaven for an out of work wine journo who likes to blog from time to time.