THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 23, 1995 TAG: 9507200050
SECTION: FLAVOR PAGE: F7 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: HUMBLE STEWARD
SOURCE: JIM RAPER
LENGTH: Long : 111 lines
I'M THE KIND of vacationer who will desert his beach cabana or lakefront cabin to roam through the local food markets.
For me, this is an exciting part of traveling.
The Mexican food aisle in an Austin supermarket becomes an exotic vista. And on my last trip to France I spent hours in the super marches of Bordeaux and Menton and Paris. ``Can you believe how many pates they have?'' I'd exclaim to my friend, Deborah. ``And the fish! Have you seen the fresh fish?''
Because I'm as interested in wine as I am in food, my roamings in these unfamiliar locales always include close inspections of wine stocks in markets and liquor shops.
Alcoholic beverage laws, wholesale distribution patterns and local wine availability combine to make retail wine stocks quite different in our United States. In foreign lands, the stocks vary even more.
The oenophile's reaction to a mountain of untried wines is not unlike the climber's reaction to an alpine landscape; so enchanting are the possibilities.
True, too, the mountain of wine can be as daunting as the mountain of stone. How can the wine explorer begin to tame the mountain? Which of the bottles should he or she grab?
The answer for most of us involves a guide.
Books can be one type of guide. I usually research the local wines of any region to which I am headed. A buying guide such as Barbara Ensrud's ``Best Wine Buys'' can also be useful.
But a guide of another sort - a person familiar with the wines available in a particular place - is better.
Wineries near to your vacation destinations are obvious places to look for advice. You can usually count on being offered a tasting as well as good, useful conversation.
There are small problems with this course, however. Wineries won't be near to your every destination. Also, winery personnel are likely to want to talk only about their own products.
The better course, I've found, whether in Fort Wayne or Cap d'Agde, is to search out a quality wine shop and pick the mind of the proprietor. Ask about the local wines, if there are any. But don't stop there. Tell the proprietor the types of wine you like. Then ask him to recommend other wines - from anywhere - that are new to you, but are likely to meet your price and pleasure demands.
This is how I discovered a superb red on a recent trip to Long Island. In the Amagansett Wine & Spirits shop I jawed with owner Mike Cinque and eventually asked him to help me select 12 bottles of wine that were tasty, reasonably priced, and would be new to me.
One of the first bottles he selected was Gran Creacion 1992 La Mancha Tinto, which is a blend of 60 percent tempranillo (the trustworthy red grape of Rioja and other parts of Spain) and 40 percent cabernet sauvignon. The wine is made by Bodegas Morales of Noblejas. I couldn't remember tasting any of the wines from Don Quixote's home turf, and what I had read about them had not been promising. ``It's a killer,'' Mike promised. Hmmm, I thought to myself as I turned the bottle to find the price tag, a killer . . . and it costs only $8.95.
That night at dinner we drank several bottles of red, a couple of which cost well more than $8.95, but the Gran Creacion was the hit of the evening. It tasted jammy, then spicy, and there was a bit of tea flavor on the finish. Everyone wanted more, but I had just the one bottle. To make matters worse, we were leaving the South Fork of Long Island the next morning before Mike opened his shop.
I wondered aloud if I could order a case. Bill, a traveling companion from Norfolk, said he'd want a case if Mike would ship it. The name of Bill's sailboat is Rocinante (Quixote's horse) and he thought this wine from La Mancha should be his ``house red'' for the sailing season.
Two weeks passed and I hadn't called Mike in Amagansett. Friends Ann and Chuck arrived from Cincinnati for a visit. Just as they had said they would, they brought wines from the wineries and wine shops of the Cincinnati area.
The first bottles out of the bag were from an eccentric winemaker who produces exceptional wines in his basement in North College Hill, Ohio. He trucks in Sonoma juice and makes several different reds and whites that he labels Burnet Ridge.
But the last of Ann and Chuck's gift bottles was, believe it or not, another Gran Creacion 1992 from La Mancha. I shrieked from joy.
Their bottle was a ``crianza,'' which is required by Spanish regulations to be aged in wood longer than the ``tinto'' we had drunk on Long Island. The crianza had been recommended to my friends by Piazza Discepoli Wine Merchants in Cincinnati and they had paid $9.95 for it.
Of course, I couldn't wait to open it and did at the first opportunity. Everyone loved it. It was the same blend of tempranillo and cabernet and tasted much like the tinto. I detected a bit more spice as well as a note of black olive on the finish.
My oh my, now I had a choice to make. Should I call Amagansett or Cincinnati to try to wrangle more of the Gran Creacion? Or should I take hope from the fact that these La Mancha overachievers are available both in the Midwest and the Northeast?
Maybe they will be available soon in Hampton Roads shops. Maybe one or two of our shops already stock Gran Creacion and I haven't noticed. Maybe, too, our shops have lots of killer wines they'd love to introduce us to, if we'd just give them the opportunity.
For what it's worth, Mike Cinque runs an extraordinary shop with huge, well-stocked cellars on the floor below. He travels often to the great wine producing areas of the world and has a loyal clientele.
Here are a couple of the other good-value wines on his must-try list:
Burgans 1994 Albarino Rias Baixas ($11) - This is a beautifully perfumed white from northeastern Spain. The albarino grape makes a wine that smells nearly as tantalizing as viognier, but has a more forceful finish. It's a great seafood wine, and, according to Mike, soon to ``get hot.''
Godeval Godello 1993 Vina Godeval Valdeorras ($6) - The godello grape is used to make a wonderfully crisp but substantial white. It, too, is from northeastern Spain. by CNB