Macabeo

Yeah,

you can see, you know, particularly in Rioja, they are concerned because they have Viura Macabeo as their white wine, the Tempranillo Blanco, but there's very little of it and I didn't even really know it existed.

Did you taste it? I

think it tastes like bananas.

Spain sold 190 million bottles of it somewhere around there last year and it ships to over 130 different countries.

But if you have five bottles of sparkling wine from the same Catalan town, same grapes, same method, same valley, right now that bottle could be sold under one of five names.

Only one of them, Cava.

Some of the most respected producers of the last 150 years have walked out of the D.O. or the Appalachian altogether and taken their wines with them.

Cava is sparkling wine, made the same way as champagne, with a second fermentation inside the bottle, mostly from three white grapes, Macabello, Xarello, Parellada.

Its home is the Penedes, about 45 kilometers west of Barcelona, but it can also be made in La Rioja, Aragón, Extremadura.

And the geography is kind of at the heart of a fight that's been going on for a while.

And I think cava at every price point is one of the great deals in wine anywhere in the world.

So we brought one here, which is a really interesting grape varietal.

It's called Macabeo and it's from the region of Calatitude.

And we're going to point that out right on the map so we show you exactly Our map of Spain, Calatitude is right here.

And over in this end, over here, which is obviously, you know, Cava region.

And look, you've got Rioja and Nevada right here.

So this is an area that we really think is really great for white.

Why? Because it's Macabeo.

This grape varietal is one of the grapes that is the foundation of cava.

So she's, she's talking about the location of these Gran Reserva vineyards.

And why are they – ¿Por qué está plantado la, la Viura aquí?

Es una zona, eh, quizá dentro de Samaniego es la zona más a nivel mucho más, más arcilloso calcárea.

Es un suelo un poquito más-

Y las zonas altas de esas pendientes plantaban generalmente-

And traditionally, you always planted white grapes in the high areas of that area

...mayoritariamente Viura, con un poquit-- en este caso es 85% de Viura y como un 15% de Malvasía, de unas parcelitas muy viejas

85%, 85% Viura with 15%-

We can have...

Similarities between Viura, which is the main white grape in Rioja, and Chardonnay, because it's aromatic and it's easy to produce under oak aging.

And you can find this buttery and yet French style of white wine in Rioja, similar to Burgundy.

That's fairly new from the 90s, the 1890s, so interesting.