The Vinos of Gerry Dawes: To Some Americans, Mr. Spain by Howard G. Goldberg

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Wednesday, April 25, 2012

The word “aficionado” was invented to describe my old friend Gerry Dawes. In his veins the blood of Spain flows at perpetual flood tide.

Gerry’s knowledge of Spanish culture is so encyclopedic that Don Quixote paid him a travel consultant’s per diem.  Zurbarán painted his portrait (as a saint, which mystified his  friends). Ferdinand and Isabella allowed him to run sherry, stored in the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria, to the New World; all that sherry so impressed Dawes’s first customer, a Jewish merchant named Lehmann, whom the Inquisition had expelled, that he took the whole line and named his store Jerez-Lehmann.

No one is likely to call Gerry a shrinking violet. He is a man of opinion, strong opinion, strongly expressed; he does not tend to invest in understatement. If he had been a matador, Spain would have run out of bulls.

For Dawes, Iberia’s food universe is nearly as important as its multiple wine regions. He has crisscrossed Spain seeking out, relishing, photographing and publicizing small but stellar restaurants and their chefs --- un trabajo de amor (a labor of love).

All this explains why I welcomed spending a few hours in early April tasting Gerry Dawes Selections, imported by his new company, the Spanish Artisan Wine Group, at Despaña, a SoHo cafe and grocery steeped in Iberian specialties aromas, flavors and atmosphere. The 22 wines sampled, all of  character and interest, were well worth the detour.

The Spanish Artisan Wine Group - Gerry Dawes Selections tasting and tapas luncheon at Despana Soho, April 4, 2012. L to r: writer Howard G. Goldberg (The New York Times, Decanter, others), author Alice Feiring (The Feiring Line), James Turney (Parador Selections), Arthur Schwartz (The Food Maven), Paul Vella (Valencian government promtions, paella maestro). Not pictured, author Arthur Lubow (The New York Times), who arrived a few minutes after this picture was taken. In the mirror, The Spanish Artisan Wine Group associates Candela Prol and Dana Staley. Photo by Gerry Dawes©2011. gerrydawes@aol.com  http://www.spanishartisanwinegroup.com / http://www.gerrydawesspain.com

 

As a wine salesman and chronicler, Dawes has been (to put it mildly)  an outspoken foe of the large-scale, ponderously fruity and often highly alcoholic wines that have shaped Robert W. Parker Jr.’s reputation. The overused word “artisanal” has, for the moment, fallen into some disfavor, but those are Dawes’s wines --- reflecting terruño (terroir) and winemaking skills of resolutely down-to-earth grape farmers who ferment with native yeasts and don’t give one hoot about the 100-point scoring regime.        

Dawes hunts for family-owned bodegas in diverse climates; for hand-harvesting; for diversity of style; for low alcohol, if possible; for refreshing acidity; for minimal oak intervention; for true varietal character.

All this comes down to what Ernest Hemingway, no stranger to Spain, called honest wines.

I expected to find -- and found -- high standards and disciplined choice governing the single-varietal wines and blends, whether simple, middlingly complex or subtly intricate. All felt built to accompany food, none to dominate it the way Dawes’s oversize California bêtes noires can.

I particularly liked two cavas. The first, for a quick swig, was an entry-level brut you might find in a tapas bar: the floral, brisk Josep Masachs nonvintage Viña Polo, from Penedès ($11.99). The second was a muscular nondosage Catalonian white with zip: the 2008 Festís Gold Brut Nature Gran Reserva ($22.99), a deft blend of parellada, xarel-lo, macabeu and chardonnay grapes.

My favorite tinto (red) was the sophisticated 2010 Décima made from the mencía grape in the Ribeira Sacra region ($21.99). Beautifully structured,  quietly scintillating, almost poetic, it requires a patient, careful reading.

Bodegas Adrià’s svelte 2010 Viña Barroca mencía, from Bierzo, a basic, unoaked, discreetly flavored wine, invites populist appeal ($14.99).

My pleased five-word tasting note on the 2010 Viña Cazoga tinto ($26.99), from a back-country site “known since the early 20th century as the best vineyard in the Sil River section of Ribeira Sacra,” as Dawes wrote on his tasting sheet, said merely “shades, degrees, sharps and flats.”

The 2010 godello ($24.99), a white from the small-production Bodegas D. Berna, in Valdeorras, was splendid. Pointillistic, lithe, long, delivering visceral and cerebral pleasures, it was reminiscent of white peaches.  The property, Dawes wrote, is advised by “a great local, enologist, José Luís Murcía, who may know more about godello than anyone in Galicia.”  Murcía, he went on, “advises nine wineries” but “does not mark the wines with a one-fits-all winemaking stamp.”

 You ask about rosé?  Blended from tempranillo and garnacha (red grapes), verdejo and alvillo (white), the Hermanos Merino Viña Catajarros rosado ($13), from the Cigales region, was seamless and displayed a certain seriousness under its flirtatiousness. (I tasted the 2010; you may find the 2011.) 

Gerry’s 2010 albariños, from Rías Baixas, were notable, especially Manolo Doval’s Rozas ($26.99): a great floral aroma, feather-light, grace, a swirl of subtleties.   When Gerry discusses his albariños his voices rises and his enthusiasm goes into high gear, as does the prose in his tasting sheet on albariños from members of the Asociación de Bodegas Artesanas.

The association, he relates, is  “A group of small grower-producers who rebelled against commercial wine styles in Rías Baixas and produce their own unique wines using native yeasts.” He continues: “Each wine is distinctly different from the others.  There are 14 members of this association.  I have six of  them, with probably four more to come. Why? These wines are among the greatest white wines of Spain, that’s why.”

I am not knowledgeable enough to say whether they are the greatest or not, but I loved the scintillating, complex 2010 albariño from O’Forollo ($23.99); enjoyed the lush, flavorful 2010 Avó Roxo ($24.99); and admired the lithe, fresh 2010 Cabaliero do Val ($24.99).

I wish I had drunk these wines with seafood, as Gerry did, in Rías Baixas, a marine paradise. They would have been accompanied by ostras (oysters), almejas (clams), cigalas (langoustines), nécoras  (little crabs), vieiras (sea scallops) and zamburiñas (bay scallops, sort of).

Then I would have bought a Havana cigar, copies of El Mundo and El País, both dailies,  and returned to my cool hotel lobby for a quiet evening of trying to read a language I don't know. The next morning I’d have an appointment to have my portrait painted by Velázquez.  I hear he takes American Express.

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