"Good wine ruins the purse; bad wine ruins the stomach" – old Spanish saying.
When we first came to Spain, some 6 years ago now, we enjoyed many a fine meal at El Pilon accompanied by a bottle of Viña Albali Gran Reserva. So much so, that when we had our wedding reception at El Pilon in Cómpeta, we chose Viña Albali as our red table wine. One of our guests that day, over from the UK, picked up a wine menu, and seeing that Vina Albali was not the most expensive wine on offer, ordered some more expensive wine. This, I must confess, was very much to my chagrin. Fast forward 2 years, to a barbeque at the same friends’ house in London, where said friend invited me to try “this fantastic wine from Tesco that only costs around £5. It was of course, Viña Albali! I bit my tongue and drank my slightly cold, but enjoyable glass of wine.I read recently that Viña Albali Gran Reserva was the “mystery wine” at a wine tasting weekend in Scotland. Attendees were asked to guess the cost per bottle. Most people guessed at between £9 and £15.
Not being a wine expert – other than my superb dexterity at opening it – I decided to find out some more about Viña Albali. Viña Albali’s founder, Félix Solís Fernández moved to the Valdepeñas region in the 1950’s, where he bought a bodega which was a traditional 17th century house still with earthenware wine jars. It was here that the wine was first produced. In a move to grow the business, they purchased a location in central Madrid. The wine was taken to Madrid in barrels, and bottled by hand. The bottled wine was then distributed to the, then best restaurants in the capital. However, when the Valdepeñas Denomination of Origin was established, the wine had to be bottled at source so the Solís family moved back to Valdepeñas.
Denomination of Origin is a Regulatory Board that establishes the norms of manufacturing various products such as cheese, wine and olive oil. Each Board regulates the area of production, manufacturing process, ingredients and the factors affecting the products, in order to assure the authenticity of them. Every item will then have a serial number, to show every one of them is a unique item.
The Viña Albali estate covers 340 hectares (840 acres) and is planted with 470,000 vines. The varieties of grapes grown are Tempranillo, Cabernet Sauvignon and Garnacha.
From bottling the wine by hand in the beginning, the current winery situated on the Madrid to Andalucia road, can bottle 6,000 bottles of wine per hour.
Viña Albali now has warehouses in France and the Czech Republic and is available as far away as Shanghai. And there was me thinking it was only available in Cómpeta and Tesco!
