Who is this Wine for? ‘El Garbi’: A Case Study
The problem for many in the wine trade is the belief, learned and perpetuated through their time in wine education, that if you can effectively tell the story of the place from where the wine originates, then you have done your job.
The story depends upon the idea that the majority of customers care enough to be educated into liking or desiring a particular wine. They don’t. Customers need a reason to care and that reason usually lies in their stylistic preference being met at a price point that allows for this to be more than a one-off indulgence.
Of course there are exceptions, a great storyteller can engender desire in the audience but let’s not confuse this with unbridled commercial success. The argument for fine wine, those wines from the hallowed terroir of Montalcino or Musigny, Pauillac or Puligny, Barossa or Barolo, allow for the initiated to buy history and status. But what if the wines you are selling are from Marcillac or the Mâconnais, Tupangato or Tejo; what then?
Whilst engaged on a project in Terra Alta, Northern Spain, to make a wine that would become known as ‘El Garbi’, with fellow MW Liam Steevenson and the brilliant Franck Massard, we very much focused in on what our customers had been asking for. Across Europe and Asia, sommeliers and medium-sized distributors alike, had asked for red wines that were easier to drink, softer and more obviously fruity. We decided to make a wine that therefore was going to be very different from the often heady and rather alcoholic Garnacha based wines of the region.
Our version needed to be something that played to Garnacha’s real strengths rather than the textbook tropes that paint Spain’s most versatile grape into a picture of jammy dodginess that rarely satisfies past the first glass.
Rather than waiting for full physiological ripeness, we picked when there was still a hint of herbaceousness and this allowed us to keep the alcohol level down, the acidity on the right side of salivating and with a perfume that expanded beyond red fruit to one where the flora of Catalunya appeared to grow, rose-like, from the glass.
This was achieved by fermenting in three different ways. One third saw only 24 hours on the skins, the second third was removed halfway through the fermentation and the final third was allowed to follow the more traditional route of skin contact throughout. These three wines were brought together after a short period in old oak and the result was a wine that after a little make-up was applied from 5% of excellent Garnacha Blanca, was everything we hoped it would be.
What’s the point of all this you may ask. Well, many winemakers insist that 90% of the magic happens in the vineyard with only 10% having anything to do with what happens in the winery. This is true for a few places in the world. I’ve tasted enough to know that without outstanding terroir it is very difficult to make outstanding wine; but very good wine...? Well, that’s where being aware of what the customer or market wants is the real skill, because ultimately, an attempt to educate through the extollation of the esoteric attributes of your particular patch of land will leave the majority lukewarm at best.
By answering the call for a red that drank more like a white, we found fans for this wine from its first release with positive reviews (91 from Decanter) and a following that was the result of listening to the market rather than insisting on educating a consumer that had never asked to be schooled; they just wanted something delicious to drink.
Mark Pygott MW
