Alegre y Valgañón

Rioja (Sajazarra)

'Claríto' Clarete of Garnacha & Viura 2022

Size

Claríto (“the little clear one”) is roughly 50-50 Garnacha and Viura. 3,500 kg of Garnacha at 14% abv comes from 80yo bush-vines from the Briones municipality, grown in the foothills between Oullar i and Hormilla. We’re in the Najerilla Valley, heading south up into the pebbly chalk/red sand foothills under Sierra de la Demanda. These foothills are the traditional home of Clarete and the field blend vineyard that we’ve secured was purposefully planted for Clarete

Claríto is a collaborative project between Scott Wasley, Leah Teschendorff, Oscar Alegre & Eva Valgañón. With the help of Oscar and Eva, we've helped to rescue the historical method of making pink wine, clarete, a method which involves the co-fermentation of both red and white grapes to create a clear pink wine. 

Label artwork by Leah Teschendorff.

The palest faded pink rose petal to look at, lucid and brilliant (clarete does mean ‘the clear one’, after all). There’s a delicate crackle of limestone soil energy apparent throughout, just nestled under gorgeous vegetal pink smells in between rose (Cécile Brünner, perhaps) and geranium, with an oyster shell edge. It’s fragrant in the most beautiful way, without anything heady or cloying. While it’s all Garnacha pink to smell, the palate’s where you see the skin contact maturity and subtle power of properly elaborated white. Dry, but gently rich, cut through by stoney and nutty elements, it’s a wine of texture, evenly spread, gently tooled, savoury, seamless, graceful.