Summer's essential wine heresies
Never mind putting ice in wine - the Spanish cheerfully tear up the wine rule book in other ways to beat the heat. Plus: what I've been drinking this week
ORDERING at a bar in the Rioja hill town of Laguardia last summer, my curiosity was piqued by the long drink the guy next to me had in front of him. I was told that this was a calimocho (or kalimotxo here in the far south of what is technically still the Basque country): red wine and Coca-Cola over ice. Surely this was pure heresy, in the heart of the Rioja Alavesa?
Well actually, no. Granted, you’re not going to be mixing a calimocho using Muga Gran Reserva Rioja 2005. But Spaniards, even in the Rioja country, have no qualms about using a cheap, young red to make what has become one of the nation’s quintessential summer drinks.
I was reminded of this by a recent revival of the long-running debate about whether it is ever acceptable to add ice to wine, made more urgent this week with the long-delayed arrival in Britain of summer weather. This fretting over wine etiquette isn’t surprising, given many Brits’ over-sensitivity to being thought silly or ignorant about wine (it should be noted that this is not a self-doubt that afflicts many French people, regardless of how little they know about what’s in their glass.)
My starting principle on such matters is that you should drink whatever you want and not care what anyone else says. But if you add ice to anything it will obviously dilute it as it melts, so I wouldn’t add it to any even vaguely special or interesting wine.
But a couple of cubes in a glass of cheap white or rosé on a hot day: what’s the worst thing that can happen, aside from that bogeyman of the English middle-class imagination, the snooty French wine waiter, tutting at you in your head? The French do it themselves with “rosé piscine”, now a well-established summer ritual – rosé over ice, ideally by the pool.
Put Spaniards’ generally more laid-back approach to everything than their northern neighbours together with the country’s hotter weather, and it’s not surprising that Spain has several much-loved wine heresies to help cool things down in summer.
The calimocho was supposedly invented in the Basque country in 1972 by a group of festival organisers trying to cover up the taste of a bad batch of wine – but the idea may be older than that. Coca-Cola was first sold in Spain in the 1920s and the American company opened its first Spanish bottling plant in Barcelona in 1953.
Either way, calimocho is as easy as it is refreshing. Add two parts red wine to one part coke, over plenty of ice in a tall glass, with a slice of orange – and a dash of orange bitters if you’re feeling fancy.
Older and better known in Britain is sangría, curse of sunburnt Brits on the Costa Brava – and I admit that this reputation makes it hard for me to like it. But sangría is first mentioned in the early nineteenth century as a creation of Spanish peasants. Mixing two of the cheapest local ingredients – red wine and fruit juice – to make a cool and less alcoholic drink than wine would make sense for people toiling all day without access to safe drinking water, much as in those days English farm labourers drank weak beer in the fields.
There are Spanish sources that claim, however, that sangría’s modern invention was largely for tourists in the 1960s. It’s certainly associated by most Spaniards with chiringuitos – beach bars.
But it is – or can be – a more complicated drink, to be mixed in a jug rather than your glass: really a punch, involving not just red wine, orange juice and chunks of fruit but also usually a hard liquor like pacharán (a Spanish sloe gin) or Triple Sec, as well as sugar or syrup and maybe vanilla or cinnamon. Indeed sangría has somehow been officially recognised by the EU, along with its close Portuguese cousin, sangria. This means that if you are lazy enough to buy a ready-made bottle of the stuff rather than make your own, you can be assured that it was mixed in a genuine Spanish booze factory rather than, say, a British drinks plant on a Swindon industrial estate.
The slightly smarter alternative is aigua de València, a cocktail of cava, orange juice, gin and vodka first invented in a bar in that city in 1959. It’s not actually as lethal as it sounds, and though it’s a little fruity for my taste, I’m not going to argue with a jarrita (little jug) of it at a pavement café in Valencia.
A simpler long wine drink unsullied by the image of the slurring Torremolinos Brit – El Sid, as I think of him – is tinto de verano, ie “summer red wine”. This red wine/lemonade cooler is said to have been invented by a Córdoba bar owner, Federico Vargas, in the early twentieth century: it is reportedly still the local habit in Córdoba when ordering a tinto de verano to call for a “Vargas” (I have not tried doing this.) Then again, another origin myth has it that tinto de verano was created by British visitors to Sevilla’s Feria de Abril in the 1960s.
Either way, it has the virtue if you’re making it at home of being very simple: half-and-half red wine with soda water or lemonade, over ice in a tall glass. You can add a slice of lemon, and a splash of red vermouth if you like (I prefer it with lemonade and vermouth.) Alternatively, you can follow the Barcelona habit of simply adding soda water to a vermouth on ice for a longer drink than a straight vermút.
Lastly, if you’re in Andalucía, you can order a rebujito – essentially a tinto de verano made with sherry. Add one part fino or manzanilla sherry to two parts soda water or lemonade – or half-and-half if you prefer a little more kick – over ice and a few mint leaves. You’ll certainly last longer at the Feria de Jerez on these than if you’re knocking back sherries all day.
This week’s sunshine will probably disappear before our need for these long wine drinks becomes too pressing. But while it lasts, we can reject convention, Spanish-style: ¡ponme un calimocho!
What I’ve been drinking this week
St Mont Grande Cuvée Tradition 2020, AOC St Mont - the Plaimont growers’ co-operative in south-west France has pretty much single handedly established the St Mont appellation, while doing many worthwhile experiments with obscure and near-extinct local grapes. This white is made from the marginally better-known local Gros Manseng, Petit Courbu and Arrufiac varieties: it has an aromatic floral nose, citrus fruit with a touch of honey, and a grapefruit finish. Different (Tesco, £9.50.)
Monemvasia Winery Tsimbidi “Monemvasios” 2014, PGI Lakonia - an unsual blend of workhorse local red grape Agiorgitiko and the less-common Mavroudi, this is from a winery outside the amazing Byzantine city of Monemvasia, on the easternmost southern prong of the Peloponnese. It’s unusual to see a red with this much bottle age from the area: aromatic with ripe red fruit and softened tannins. There’s oak but it’s very harmonious. I drank this at my current fave London Greek restaurant, Holland Park’s Vori (Shelved Wine, Davis Bell McCraith Wines, from £20.61.)
Fontodi Chianti Classico 2021 - Fontodi is surely one of the most consistently reliable Chianti producers. This most recent vintage of their (organic) straight Chianti Classico, which I bought in bond from the Wine Society, doesn’t disappoint. Classic cherry fruit and hint of juicy bitterness, with a solid stucture and soft tannins (it’s had 18 months in French oak but is already well integrated.) Textbook Chianti (Shelved Wine, Hedonism Wines, VINVM and elsewhere, from £19.87.)
Transparency declaration: the St Mont was a free sample.
Indeed. The only real expression of terroir in sangría is the beach…
Sounds fun!