Wine Tasting At Barranco Oscuro

Yesterday we spent a very interesting, pleasant and eventful day in the mountains with our friends Lorenzo and Luisa.

Lorenzo’s farther set up and runs an amazing winery that specialises in environmentally friendly wines called Barranco Oscuro. Lorenzo is following very successfully in his father’s footsteps, as they continue to produce very interesting wines indeed.

They only produce 30,000 bottles a year, primarily red, with a sparking, sweet and white wine thrown in as well. They produce in a manner that we would call Organic I guess – nothing artificial, not pesticides, sugar, etc. The process takes longer, is not without its risks and they were the first to adopt this process arguably in the world!

Luisa has recently set up a business called Vinos Auténticos (Authentic Wines) to promote these and other wines that are produced in this manner:

The day started with a bit of a cock up as we thought we had agreed to meet at 10.30 am but in fact it was 9.30 am so we were a little late for our cafe and tostada at Cafe Milenio. Lorenzo had had to leave so Luisa came with us in the old Jeep, which turned out to be a good move!!! The winery is high in the mountains and a combination of the Jeep’s age and the fact that I hadn’t checked the water for 18 months meant we overheated on the climb up the mountains. Never mind, left the Jeep in a little village called Albondón and Lorenzo came and collected us as we were only 10km from the winery.

To get to the winery you head down the ‘motorway’ towards Malaga. Past Adra you will see a sign to turn left to Albuñol. This is a village with a lot of history as it used to be the center of the agricultural economy (before the plastic) until heavy rains and flooding wiped out pretty much the whole area. Now as you drive through the village you will see what looks like a dry river bed running down the mountain and through the village. This is to capture any future repeat of the heavy rains. From Albuñol you head towards Albondón and then keep going for 10km towards Cádiar. The winery is on your right. It takes no more than an hour (assuming you don’t overheat like we did)

The winery is split into two main vineyards, and they are the highest vines in Spain. In addition to using no herbicides, fertilisers or pesticides on the vines, and something that Sands found really interesting, was that there is actually no need to artificially add yeast to the grapes as it is already there! They let nature take its course. Given the climate if you look at the grapes closely you will see a fine dust covering them, and in this dust is natural yeast. Basically leaving out the sulphur that is so common allows this natural yeast to do its work, and leads to less headaches for wine lovers

They make a white wine, a sweet white wine, several red wines and a unique sparkling wine. The sparkling wine is unique as they add no sugar. Instead they harvest the vines as normal around September but leave a few until December. From the September vines they produce the base wine, and in December they add the newly harvested vines which in effect is the sugar. Another first for the winery as they invented this method.

The vines grow in two areas and one lot are lower in height that the others and planted within an American vine that is used as a ‘antibody’ to a particular harmful pest – a natural protection!!! Lorenzo explained and the different types of vine leaves and how you can tell them apart, but it is a while before I would want to be tested on them!!!

The actual winery is in the middle of the construction of the tasting rooms and acomodation, and the production area is pretty quite at this time of year, but we had a great tour around. One thing that is immediately obvious is how labour intensive the whole process is, especially the sparkling wine.

The wines start at 7€ for a red wine and the most expensive is the sweet wine at 29€. The sparkling wine is 9€. As for the wines themselves I am no expert at all, and in fact have very little interest in wine. They tasted OK to me, although certainly a little different from the ones you find in the shops and restaurants. I actually don’t like sparkling wine or champagne at all, nor do I like sweet wines, but I did enjoy the reds and the white, and would certainly drink them on a regular basis.

After the tour we stopped off at a local restaurant (yes it did serve their wines!!) for a traditional 2 hour spanish lunch that was very pleasant (salad, scrambled eggs with prawns and green beans, snails, fish, meats, sausages etc).

By the time we got back to the car it had cooled down and after topping it up with water it got us home OK. The irony is that I am waiting on the parts to come from the UK so that I can service it!

Photos

You can see more photos over on our Flickr account, or all of the photos over on our

Video

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This is a long video at just under 30 minutes but it is full of useful facts about the wine production at Barranco Oscuro and the tasting of the wines.

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