My Little Hondarrabi

Just a quick little note here on a red Txakolina — yes, a red Txakolina! — from Gorrondona. If you've experienced a Txakolina it's probably been one of the whites, which feature Atlantic salinity and usually a prickle of CO2. And they're lovely and affordable, not unlike Muscadets.

This wine, though, is made from the red hondarrabi beltza grape and it's terrific. The grapes are not only farmed organically, but they're culled from 150 year old pre-phylloxera vines. The end result is a wild, brambly wine that delivers pure and precise dark cherry and loganberry fruit, earth and minerals, and a clean but racy acidity. Yes, I know that "racy" borders on the cliché, but there's a lot of energy here, and this wine walks that knife edge between wild and civilized, encapsulating the positives of both without any of the negatives. Lovely stuff.