Walter's World, Edition No. 15 (October 2025)
Happy fall everyone!
This is my [Chris'] favorite time of the year - I can put on a different set of clothes that make me feel all cozy, the light has that soft glow, and the cravings shift to long, slow braises & roasts. This last bit is where this month’s wine club selections come in with a collection of Iberian varieties that all work wonderfully with the necessities of fall. Wines that warm you up, wines that comfort you, wines that bring food to life.
Iberia is one of my favorite places in Europe. The culture can’t be beat, the food is insane, and parts of it feel just like the PNW. The wines from the peninsula are so diverse that if it floated off into the sea, you’d never miss a thing: amazing sparkling, mineral-laden & taut to unctuous & savory whites, tobacco-filled raspberry-jam to alpine-herb & fresh-cherry reds, plus a myriad of sweet styles if that’s your thing.
We hope you enjoy these as much as we are!
Cheers,
the Walter's team
the Walter's team
I | Sierra de Toloño Blanco
2024 | Rioja Alavesa, Spain | Viura
A couple months back we took a look into what’s going with Rioja by featuring a modern and a traditional producer. We couldn't have an Iberian feature without another perspective on the region and this is one of the most exciting producers of the subregion of Rioja Alavesa we’ve tasted in a while. Sandra Bravo is a young woman that has been inspired by the new wave of growers and producers that are putting more emphasis on the place of Rioja, rather than the winemaking. Traditionally, as you tasted with the Lopez de Heredia, a big part of the wine is the result of aging in wood for extended periods of time which results in a very complex and savoury spin that generally requires food in order to thoroughly enjoy it. While the quality of fruit and place of origin are an important part of this recipe, at the end of the day when the cork is popped it’s not really what these expressions are about. And that’s totally fine and has its place. I love those wines. The problem is that there is a lot of Rioja made that relies on this aging approach to cover up mediocre fruit quality or vineyards that aren’t that great. When wines are made with more transparency, read less wood aging, then the quality of fruit and place are paramount and that’s what you’re going to taste with all of Sandra’s wines. This is her bottling of the native Viura, an acid driven white that shows both richness and focus at the same time with preserved lemon, tarragon, and honey. Raised entirely in stainless steel there isn’t any way to disguise quality here, it’s laid out for you to taste without distraction.
II | Sacred Shore ThreeMile Vineyard
2023 | Columbia Gorge, Washington | 100% Mencía
This is a new project that started in 2021 and is one of the most exciting wineries in the PNW at the moment for me. Created by two friends with different wine backgrounds who saw some parallels between northwest Spain and northern Oregon, they set out to create several iterations of Albariño, Mencia, and oddly enough - Sangiovese. While the latter may seem out of place, a special plot of vines that was developed from cuttings sourced from the famed Biondi-Santi estate in Tuscany’s Montalcino was too good to pass up. We have some of this on the shelf should you be so curious.
What we’ve included in the club is their Mencia from the ThreeMile vineyard on the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge, just outside the Dalles. Mencia is a cool variety, kind of a cross stylistically between Pinot Noir & Syrah, but is a native to northern Spain in the Castilla y Leon region of Bierzo. The approach Sacred Shore has taken is not unlike the norm in Spain with a healthy portion of whole cluster fermentation that builds this lovely perfume and creates a bit more texture in the wines too.
III | Viñátigo Rosado
2024 | Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain | Listán Negroa
Are you shocked that there’s another Canary Island wine in the club again? Hahahahaha!
I can't get enough, it’s borderline addiction at this point. In all seriousness, this is a super cool wine from the island of Tenerife grown on the northern coast by fourth generation native Juan Jesus and his family. Juan is a talented dude, not only farming biodynamically and making killer wines, but is also a professor at the local viticulture & enology school where he also collaborates with another university in Tarragona on the mainland to document and preserve the native grapes of the Canaries. When it comes to his own wines, he and his wife Elena try not to make too much of an impression on them, they just pay close attention so that they ferment healthily to produce pure, clean, and vibrant expressions of their special place in the middle of the Atlantic. This rosado is made from Listán Negro undergoing a short maceration time, anywhere from 2-4 hours, and is full of salted red licorice, strawberries, marjoram, and dried roses. Delish on its own or with grilled langoustines and pickled chiles that I had for lunch yesterday would be a treat as well!
IV | Pegaso Zeta
2020 | Sierra de Gredos, Spain | Garnacha
You may have heard me wax poetic about the magic of well-made Garnacha before, and this wine is another perfect example of what excites me about the variety. Grown at high altitude in the mountains northwest of Madrid in the town of Cebreros, this wine is a blend of a few different vineyard sites on two different soil types - slate & granite. Pegaso was started by Telmo Rodriguez as he explored the lesser known regions of Spain in search of old vineyards and special terroirs back in the late 1990s. He stumbled upon these extreme sites in Cebreros, trained as bush vines sitting at over three thousand feet, an environment that creates Garnacha that is wild, generally lower in alcohol, and more structured that its counterparts in easier growing condition areas. The winemaking is pretty straightforward here (notice a pattern in the wines we choose?) with the fermentation happening in large neutral wood casks followed by a year of aging in both neutral wood and stainless steel. Everything is done with the intention of preserving the character of this amazing fruit and ensuring the wines have freshness above all else. This is what real Garnacha is all about, and I can’t get enough of it.