Yesterday I was hired to do a tasting for a bunch of Americans. In reality, they were a bunch of Spaniards and one American. Fortunately, because they all worked for an American company, I could thankfully use a bit of English for those more complex topics. The most intriguing part of the night? I, as an American, was attempting to teach 13 Spaniards about their wines!

Two things I want to mention about this:

• 1) If you are in town and want to have a trip/tasting/or tour set up that focuses around wine, please [email me->mailto:ryan@catvino.net] and I see what I can do. Or if you want to do a food and wine tour of Madrid check out this new site: [saborestours.com->www.saborestours.com] Not much there yet but there will be soon.
• 2)Second, I wanted to show some of my notes from the tasting I did. We had a total of 5 wines. One white, a nice little [albarino from galicia->http://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=33309], and then 4 reds all based on the Tempranillo grape. One of which had something wrong with it. Not really sure though it was quite similar to [this mystery flaw->http://fora.erobertparker.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/1/65399.html#000019].
  What I liked most though was that the wines chosen for the tasting really showed off the many different style of wine that Tempranillo can produce.

Check out my notes below:

• 2000 Condado de Haza Ribera del Duero Reserva – Spain, Castilla y León, Ribera del Duero (9/16/2005)
  Deep rich purple in color. Nose is strong vanilla oak with mineral, pepper and cherry. Good body with dry high tannin finish. In the mouth the black fruit, earth, light clove and black pepper all seem overwhelmed by the oak. Maybe this will calm down with time, but the oak it seems to overshadow the nice fruit within.
  
• 2001 Bodegas Cadarso Ciordia Crianza – Spain, La Rioja (9/16/2005)
  Dark purplish black. Nose of earth, black pepper, anise, strong black cherry, blackberry and a bit of slate on the finish. Rich with big tannin and medium to high acidity. The palate is awash with candied cherry, green and black pepper, herbs and plum. Making a subtler appearance is dried tobacco, blackcherry and earth. Very nice wine though needs a couple of years to settle down.
  
• 2003 Bodega Ntra.Sra. del Rosario La Mancha Canforrales – Spain, Castilla-La Mancha, La Mancha (9/16/2005)
  Deep purple and almost black in color. Nose that is ever evolving with gingerbread, coffee, anise plum, blackberry, and later on a streak of bacon fat! Very tannic and with a medium acidity this is a serious wine. Coffee, tobacco, blackberry, all show on the palate though I think there is more in there waiting to come out.