The Colin Harkness Wine Review

Vino brisado, vino naranja u orange wine. Llamadlo como gustéis, pero ha venido para quedarse y, dados sus 6000 años de historia, no creo que sea una afirmación tan aventurada o provocativa.

Skin contact wine, amber wine, orange wine. Call it what you will, but it’s here to stay which, given its 6,000 years history (at least!), isn’t such a profound or provocative statement, I admit. Plus, as admissions seem to be de rigeur at the moment, I’m not really talking about now, as the phone company would have had as believe in the 80s and 90s, whilst trying to convert us to their product there and then, thus capturing us for the future.

Because of the rules, a pleasing cross wine-border collaboration  between Bodegas Uvas Cabrera in Benissa, Alicante, and Bodegas Daniel Belda in Fontanars, Valencia, results in a fine wine but without reference to a Denominación of Origen on the label.

Debido a las normas establecidas, una colaboración interesante entre Bodegas Uvas Cabrera, en Benissa, Alicante y Bodegas Daniel Belda en Fontanares, Valencia da como resultado un buen vino, pero referencia alguna a la Denominación de Origen en la etiqueta.

My visit recently to Bodegas Finca Collado began with a surprise and continued in the same vein!

Mi visita de hace poco a las Bodegas Finca Collado empezó sorprendiéndome y continuó en la misma línea.

Cuando Cristina Rodríguez Vicente (www.mdealejandria.com) era pequeña, el mejor amigo de su padre, el vecino de la finca de al lado, solía traer por Navidad una botella de vino de postre casero.

When Cristina Rodríguez Vicente (www.mdealejandria.com) was a little girl, their neighbour in the next finca, Cristina’s father’s best friend, used to bring for Christmas a bottle of the dessert wine that he made at home.

Wine has been part of the fabric of everyday life for Alicantinos ever since. So it was no surprise that the wine makers of the time successfully applied for Denmoninación de Origin status in 1932. However, Alicante wines have had to climb something of a mountain in terms of national and international recognition – the fault, I am ashamed to say, of a generation or two of wine writers, before mine, I hasten to add.

El vino ha formado parte del ADN de Alicante desde que los fenicios vinieron a comerciar con sus ánforas sobre el año 1000 a.C. Los siguieron los romanos, que se pusieron a trabajar y plantaron viñedos.