Zipping Through Spain Online with Bin Ends, Braintree

365 Days

Zipping Through Spain Online with Bin Ends, Braintree

Posted 07/17/2008 at 10:30 PM by Cathy

Having friends over to share some wine is a lot like drinking a cup of tea. Neither happens quickly, and no one runs for the door afterward.

Especially not after tasting six different wines in less than an hour, as we did tonight for the first online tasting that Bin Ends wine shop in Braintree hosted on Twitter.com.

There were many reasons to linger, sip, and discuss. Six wines in under and hour was just too zippy, especially when there was so much new material to work with: with unfamiliar grape varieties, little-known regions, and even lesser-known producers, the hour-long online session ended up feeling a bit like a teaser.

All of the wines tonight came from Spain but that was about as far as the commonality went. A highlight of this tasting, certainly, was the opportunity to taste a series of wines that don't normally come across your palate or wine list. That is something Bin Ends prides itself on, and they came through tonight.

The 2006 Pazo de Monterrey, for example, came from Galicia, just north of Portugal. The wine region of Monterrei is 670 hectares large and includes only 16 vineyards. Before tonight neither my guests nor I were familiar with any of the white grapes grown there – Doña Blanca, Verdello (Godello) and Treixadura (Verdello Louro).

The 2006 Rafael Palacios Louro do Bolo Godello is also from northwest Spain, in a region called Valdeorras, where many indigenous varietals were ripped out several years ago to plant more common varietals from other areas of Spain. Now there is a movement to replant those indigenous varietals, especially Godello and Mencia. The winemaker for this particular wine, Rafael Palacios, purchased very mature vines from older producers in the zone. We were tasting a return to the roots of Valdeorras, literally.

Every one of the wines tonight had a story like that. Perhaps because the stories, and the wines, were so varied and unique in their own right, responses to them were also varied and individual. A few of us enjoyed the third white and the first red the most, a 2007 Pazo de Senorans Albarino and a 2005 Burgans Bierzo "Cuatros Pasos. Someone else was partial to the depth of the 2005 Bodegas Mustiguillo "Mestizajes," and someone else's enjoyment of the 2005 Castano Yecla "Solanera" grew the longer she lingered.

And that for me was the irony of the night. The format of the tasting on Twitter was perhaps not the best showcase for these wines. There was no video, only words on the screen that, while helpful, went too fast and too "surface" to show the depth of knowledge I know the Bin Ends people in fact have.

But the consequence? People in homes across the Boston area (and further afield, no doubt), naturally lingered. There was simply more to say about these wines and, even without enough formal guidance, we wanted to say it.

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About the Author

Cathy Huyghe

Cathy Huyghe writes about drinking wine every day in the Boston area. She finds the quirky characters, the after-hours events, and the surprising stories that make up Boston's vibrant local wine scene. But no matter where she is, what she's doing, or who she's with, she mostly just wants to drink the stuff.

Her first restaurant gig was at Chez Panisse, when she knocked on the kitchen's back door and asked if she could work there. She's also worked for Jean-Pierre Vigato in Paris and Thomas Keller in Las Vegas. She went to graduate school at Harvard (twice), and her writing has run in Boston magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Edible Boston, and on Nevada Public Radio and Grist.org.

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