Drinks in Costa Blanca

DRINKS

Wine

The Costa Blanca produces excellent wine from areas like Monovar and
Jumilla, the red wine from this region is an astonishing 18 per cent alcohol
content. Monovar makes deep reds and delicate roses and the famous dessert
wine FONDILLON.

In the last 20 years Spain’s wine industry has undergone a remarkable transformation. New technology and innovative ideas from gifted winemakers has meant that throughout Spain superb new wines are being produced from a range of grape varieties, almost on a daily basis. Without doubt, Spain is currently the most dynamic and progressive of the Old World wine-producing countries.

Spain produces a broad spectrum of quality wines which includes fortified varieties such as sherry and sweet wine, sparkling cava and table wine. In nearly all cases the wines are offer excellent value for money and a fun chance to experience new and exciting flavours, with all these different types of wine, many of which are not exported and so cannot be found outside Spain, do not miss the opportunity to try them when visiting the country. You may notice on your tastes and travels some Spanish wines are radically different in character when sold abroad.

Typical Grape Varieties

Whites: Merseguera, Moscatel Romano, Macabeo, & Planta Fina
Reds: Monastrell (Mourvèdre), Garnacha (Tinta & Tintorera), Tempranillo, and Bobal

Typical wines:

Monsatrell based reds, young & potent
Quality dessert whites
Fortified "vinos de licor" and "Fondillón"
Quality varietals - Cabernets, etc.

Cava

Cava, made by the Champagne method, is in my opinion a more delicious alternative to French champagne and offers much better value for money. Almost all cava is produced in Catalonia, especially the Penedés region, although eight different provinces are included in the production area.

Literary references show that wine with a certain amount of effervescence has been made in Catalonia since at least the fourteenth century. But it was not until the 1850s that serious attempts began to produce a wine with the same characteristics as champagne and production did not begin until the 1870s. Since then, cava has become tremendously popular and vast amounts, over two hundred million bottles, are now made for both domestic consumption and export. The best-known makes, Codorniu and Freixenet, have been involved in a full-scale trade war for years.

Cava is not the only sparkling wine made in Spain so whenever buying or ordering you can distinguish cava by the cork, which should be marked with a four-pointed star.

Like champagne, cava comes in different degrees of sweetness. The following are the categories according to sugar content, although the characteristics of different wines may mean one manufacturer's seco tastes as sweet as another's semi-seco.

Sherry

Sherry is made principally from the Palomino and Pedro Ximénez (PX) grapes, with a splash of Moscatel. The grapes are harvested and fermented in the normal way, but the wines are then left in contact with air for a prolonged period of time. Some will simply oxidise, whereas some develop a coating of flor, a thick layer of yeast, on the surface. This yeast imparts a distinctive flavour.

The wines then pass through a solera system, a tier of barrels containing wine of differing ages, oldest at the bottom and youngest at the top. The wine in the lowest barrel is drawn off and bottled, and each barrel is topped up with wine from the one above. This maintains a steady stream of wine of similar character year after year, and explains why sherry is almost never vintage dated.

Sherries come in a number of styles. These can broadly be divided into dry, medium or sweet.

Dry: Fino is the most commonly seen dry Sherry, a flor wine generally intended for drinking young. Manzanilla is a light style of Fino from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, a small fishing village on the Mediterranean coast. Amontillado is a wine left in cask until the flor has died and sunk to the bottom, the wine then darkening and taking on a more nutty character. Wines that are halfway between the Fino and Amontillado stages may be termed Fino Amontillado or Manzanilla Pasada. Oloroso is a wine which did not grow the flor yeast (the opposite of Fino), and it may be used as the base for medium or sweet Sherry. It may also be sold dry (Oloroso Seco).

Medium: The most common medium sherry is a sweetened Amontillado, but they may also be created from Oloroso wines.

Sweet: At their best these are made from Oloroso wines, sweetened with PX. In modern times they are just as likely to be poor Finos sweetened up with some Moscatel. Sweet Sherries made from just PX can be astounding. At the sweet end of the spectrum we also have the cream and brown Sherries, which I shall discuss no further.

Brandy

Spain actually predates France as a producer of fine brandies. With long finishes and complex flavours, Spanish brandies have historically been praised by connoisseurs as the preferred after dinner drink of truly civilized folk.

Jerez and the Solera system - The Jerez-Cadiz region of Spain is best known for the production of sherry. The distillation of wine into spirits, a process that was invented by the Chinese, was brought to Europe by the Moorish invaders who occupied Spain for 700 years.

By the 16th Century the distilling industry was well established in Spain, and by the 1800's there was vibrant trade with Holland in the sale of Holandas, an un-aged Jerez grape distillate that the Dutch used to make their liqueurs. The word "brandy" itself comes from the Dutch word brandewijn, which means "burnt wine". The actual aging of Holandas in oak casks is what makes brandy into the drink we enjoy today.

Unlike the French system of static aging, where a spirit is left in a single cask to age for years, the Spanish introduced a new system in the mid-19th century called the Solera, which uses fractional blending. In this method, rows of used oak sherry barrels filled with distilled spirit are stacked atop one another. Every few months a portion of the spirit from the barrels on top is moved into the barrel directly underneath it, and so on. This blending process helps ensure consistency of the product and gives Brandy de Jerez its unique and complex underlying flavours. The brandy will pick up the colour and taste characteristics of the sherry originally aged in that barrel. Thus brandy aged in an Oloroso or Pedro Ximenez barrel will be far sweeter and more deeply collared than one aged in a Fino barrel. The Spanish also use American oak, not French, as American wood is more porous and permits a greater degree of oxygenation to occur, which increases evaporation (the "angel's share") and aging.

There are three different aging categories effecting flavour and of course cost

Solera: six months by law, but usually one year
Solera Reserva: over two years
Solera Gran Reserva: over three years by law, but usually aged at least 10-12 years

Beer

While Spain is without a doubt a wine culture, Spanish beer - or cerveza - certainly pulls its own weight. When in Spain, why not try a Spanish beer - you can drink your more-known American and Belgian beers anywhere! As you hop from place to place, ask bartenders about regional beers as there are tons. However, there is also a handful of well-established national Spanish beer brands to be found throughout.

When in search of a cold brew, ask for a caña of a regional Spanish beer or one of the following:

Cruzcampo
Damm
Mahou
San Miguel

Also, for a lighter but equally refreshing alternative, ask for a clara. A normal clara is one part Spanish beer and one part Casera (like tonic water with just a hint of lemon-flavoring), while a clara con limón (clara with lemon) is one part beer and one part lemon soda.

The Spirits of Alicante

Alicante is famed for various alcoholic concoctions made from herbal and natural ingredients.

"Aperitivo Café de Alcoy" is the spirit made in the province of Alicante, created by mashing natural coffee in alcohol producing a strength between 15% and 25% by volume with a dark colour.

"Anís Paloma de Monforte del Cid" is the spirit flavoured with aniseed made in the province of Alicante and obtained by distillation of green anise (Pimpinella anissum, L.)  and/or Star Anise, also known by badiana (Illicium verum), in neutral alcohol of agricultural origin with an alcoholic strength between 40 and 55% in volume.  The maximum sugar content by litre of the finished product will be 50 grams/litre.

"Herbero de la Sierra de Mariola" or (literally "Herb of the mountain range of Mariola") is flavoured with aniseed and made in the province of Alicante and obtained by distillation of plants collected in the zone of the Mountain range of Mariola (hence the name!)in the province of Alicante, with neutral alcohol of agricultural origin of alcoholic strength between 25% and 40%. The colour can vary from yellow-green to a reddish tint and can also include a clear colour.         

Alicante has its own herbal drink based on thyme, Cantueso Alicantino, since the last century this drink, between 25 and 35% proof, has been made by distilling, in copper alembics, cantueso (Thymus moroderi). It is then given flavour and aged in oak barrels.

This procedure is still used by the companies which at present manufacture
"CANTUESO ALICANTINO". It is a natural liqueur with a very agreeable flavour.
It can be served chilled or at room temperature at any hour of the day, although it is generally taken in the morning.