Anima Negra, AN / 2 Vina di Terra Mallorca 2009
Around €22
Available from good Independent Wines shops and Off Licences including: Celtic Whiskey Shop, Dawson Street, D2 & winesonthegreen.com nationwide; Cases Wine Warehouse, Headford Road, Galway; 64 Wines, Glasthule Road, Glasthule, County Dublin.
Anima Negra is a family run winery operation, located in Mallorca or as we spell it in Ireland, Majorca, the largest of the Balearic Islands.
Yes, you are reading this correctly, this is wine, brilliant fine wine from one of the dance and trance capital of Europe.
Many of the dance and trance visitors of course never make it more than a few hundred yards from their bed, beach or club. Leaving the hinterlands, pristine.
Indeed the rest of the islands are almost empty, totally unspoilt and in some cases UN World Heritage sites that will remain permanently protected.
As befitting its name, Anima Negra meaning, Dark Soul, or maybe moody soul, this is a complex blend of local Mallorcan varieties Callet at 65% dominates, then 20% Mantonegro, 15% Syrah and 5% Fogoneu.
The wine is very pungent, rather spicy and heather like, with touches of bramble, not unlike a Gigondas or good Cote Du Rhone. The taste on the palate however is much lighter, more like a Pinot Noir, but a soft, caramel tinged New World Pinot. I think this is where its appeal will lie in adventurous Pinot Noir lovers, who want to come back from the New World but not yet to Burgundy.
Domaine Elian Da Ros, Le Vin est une Fête, Cotes de Marmandais 2012
€14.95 down from €16.95
Available from Terroirs of Donnybrook, Morehampton Road, Donnybrook and terroirs.ie nationwide
This is the very definition of hipster and cutting edge wine, from a rough hewn neighbour of St.Emilion and Pomerol, to the south in fact and created as an AC only in 1990, but it had been making and quietly supplying wines into the broad Bordeaux camp for centuries.
Indeed, the right bank, the eastern side of Bordeaux over the River estuary of the Gironde is the ancient heartland of Roman and Medieval Bordeaux, the Bordeaux that gave Bordeaux its lustrous reputation.
This wine is sinewy and quite rugged, organic wine at its raw, honest best. Also at 12,5% this blend of Merlot 20%; Cabernet Franc 40% and Abouriou (pronounced Ar-boo-u ) 40%.
