Garnacha vs Tempranillo Dinner

The recent PWC wine dinner was a comparison between Spanish wines made from Garnacha and Tempranillo. The inspiration came when I was looking up Grenache Noir, expecting to confirm it as a French grape, when to my surprise, I found that it was of Spanish origin. I then thought it would be fun to compare the wines made from two Spanish varieties. Of course, there are many other factors to take in account, but trying varietals made from two indigenous Spanish grapes from a variety of different areas would still be illuminating.

In the end, the line up consisted of 4 Garnacha wines from Aragon (the place of origin of the grape), Priorat, Montsant and Campo de Borja, whilst the Tempranillo wines came from Rioja, Toro, Navarra and Castilla y Leon. There was a Cava as welcome drink, and we had the Txacholi to go with fish. A medium sweet sherry concluded the meal, making the cepage an all Spanish affair.

Now, that's an idea!

I saw this new book at the Book Fair on Saturday. Although I wasn't aware of its publication, I gad come across a poster advertising an event in this series which combined wine tasting and spiritual formation recently being advertised at the Cathedral and it seems this book resulted from this series of meetings. Out of curiosity, I got a copy.

It also got me thinking. In this blog, I have discussed matters ecclesiastic and spiritual when it had somehow connected with the wines under discussion. These included how some properties or vineyards got their names (eg Chateau Angelus) or that such a vineyard was founded by some monks or nuns or other religious order (many vineyards with Clos in their name used to be walled properties  of monasteries). I had a short series on charity wines and many of these had church connections too. Of course, the Avignon Papacy gave us the appellation of Chateauneuf du Papes! That is enough inspiration for me to consider going through the blog and trying to make a book out of the ramblings on this blog!!