Que Viva España!

SPAIN IN A GLASS — FIVE OF THEM, ACTUALLY

Spain is one of the world’s great wine countries, and not only because of the famous regions and the famous grapes. It’s because here, wine was never really about wine. It’s about land, history, family, food, and any excuse for a celebration.

Five wines. Five Spanish bites. One country. One evening that starts on the wet, green Atlantic coast, crosses the high plains of Castile, climbs into the slate hills of the Mediterranean, and finishes with Spain’s two great classics.

With every glass we ask the same five questions. Where are we? What is the grape? What’s its story? What makes this wine different? And what are we eating with it? That last one is not hypothetical — a classic Spanish bite comes with every glass.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A GRAPE DISAPPEARS?

Spain has hundreds of indigenous varieties, and a great many of them very nearly vanished — to phylloxera, to changing fashions, to villages quietly emptying out. Over the last thirty years a new generation of winemakers has gone looking for them, replanted them, and turned them back into living history. Several of the bottles we’re opening exist because somebody refused to let a grape go.

Every bottle preserves something.

🍾 THE LINEUP 🍾

🥂 Pazo Señoráns Colección 2021 — Albariño, D.O. Rías Baixas
We start in Galicia, the Spain nobody expects: green, wet, Atlantic, granite underfoot and the sea never far away. Pazo Señoráns has been the gold standard in Rías Baixas for decades, and the Colección is their serious Albariño — given long ageing on its lees, so it trades easy citrus for texture, salt and staying power. The bite it was born for: gambas al ajillo, still sizzling.

🥂 Begoña Jovellar Verdejo 2022 — Verdejo, D.O. Rueda
Inland now, onto the high, hot, wind-scoured plains of Castile. Verdejo is our first great survival story: for centuries Rueda oxidised it into a sherry look-alike, and it took until the 1970s for anyone to bottle it as a fresh white worth drinking. Begoña takes it a step further and puts it into oak. Precision, sophistication and real weight — not the supermarket Rueda you think you know.

🥂 Clos Mogador Gratallops Rosat 2021 — Priorat (D.O.Q.)
To the Mediterranean, and to the most famous comeback in Spanish wine. In the 1980s Priorat was all but abandoned — ancient vines on impossible slate slopes that nobody wanted. René Barbier and a handful of friends bought them anyway, and today Priorat is one of only two D.O.Q. regions in the whole country. Their reds get the glory; this bone-dry, savoury rosé is the estate’s best-kept secret. Just 3,600 bottles made, and 94 points from the Wine Advocate. Not a poolside pink.

🥂 El Predicador 2016 — Bodegas Contador, D.O.Ca. Rioja
Benjamín Romeo started out making wine in a cellar dug into the hill beneath the castle at San Vicente de la Sonsierra. El Predicador is his Rioja: old vines and a field blend that still holds on to Graciano and Mazuelo — two varieties Rioja very nearly stopped planting altogether. Ten years on, it is exactly where it should be. Somewhere in Castile there is a cordero asado with this bottle’s name on it.

🥂 Corimbo 2022 — Bodegas La Horra, D.O. Ribera del Duero
Same grape as the Rioja. Different name, different world. In the village of La Horra they call Tempranillo Tinta del País — the country’s own grape — and the family behind Roda came here to prove what it could do at altitude. Dark, silky, beautifully integrated and full of spice. 92 points, and a lovely place to end the journey.

AND TO FINISH

Perhaps the greatest Spanish wine tradition is not a grape, a region or a technique. It is the belief that wine belongs around a table, surrounded by food, conversation, friendship and time. We’ll travel the whole country without leaving Martha’s Vineyard — because sometimes, all you need to travel is a glass.

YOUR HOST

Martha has been drinking, selling and talking about Spanish wine for more years than she’d care to count, and this is the evening she looks forward to all year. She runs the room like a conversation, not a lecture — she wants to know which wines you love and why, she’ll ask everyone to score their favourites and then happily argue about the results. Join in as much or as little as you like. Questions are always encouraged.

WHAT’S INCLUDED

✔ Five Spanish wines, poured and guided
✔ Expert guided tasting with Martha
✔ The stories behind the grapes, the regions and the people who saved them
✔ A classic Spanish bite served alongside every wine — the food each one was made for
✔ One country, one evening, and a very good excuse to say ¡Que viva España!

€40 per person | Limited to 16 guests | 6pm – 8pm
Thursday 10 & Friday 11 September — Martha’s Vineyard Moraira.