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Showing posts with the label vino rancio

Good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used

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I don't know if you were made to read Shakespeare at school. I was. Shakespearean characters drink lots of wine. The wine they drank would be like a wine that is, nowadays, produced in just a handful of bodegas here in Alicante province. It's called Fondillón. I like it. It's price shot up when hordes of pesky wine reviewers discovered it and gave it big points scores so it's a while since I tasted it. In the distant past a standard form of vineyard tenancy agreement lasted as long as the original vines were still in production. Vines produce fewer grapes over time so growers uproot old vines and plant anew. To maintain their lease the growers left some of the original vines in place. These old, tired plants were hardly worth harvesting so, by the time the grapes were cut from the vines, they had withered and were raisin like. Fondillón is made from monastrell grapes. Fondillón has to have at least 16% volume of alcohol. To the casual drinker Fondillón has similarities ...