Andrew Jefford tastes 2020 Annius Atlántida Vino de la Tierra de Cádiz.
The Latin word campus (a field, a plain) gave us the late Latin campania, the Old French champagne, and the late Middle English champaign—all ways of describing wide open, level, treeless ground. Sometimes pale, sometimes dusty; often fertile; usually windy. “Their smoothness, like a goodly champaign plain,” wrote Shakespeare the poet, in his Rape of Lucrece (line 1,247); “Daylight and champaign discovers not more,” wrote Shakespeare the dramatist in Twelfth Night (Act II, Scene 5, line 160) Big skies, wide views, and nowhere to hide.
You find champaigns near Reims and Epernay; near Cognac, Jarnac, and Segonzac (hence “Grande Champagne” and “Petite Champagne”); and here, between Jerez de la Frontera and Sanlúcar de Barrameda: brilliant white soils glaring up at you under an indigo sky. Vines are happy in such sites, given suitable soil chemistry and adequate drainage. So are many other crops: beet in higher latitudes; wheat and maize almost everywhere; sunflowers where the sun shines. You can reassign such landscapes rapidly; nothing gets in the way. Armies race across them.
But land use is changing. Modern agriculture means that fewer hectares are required to produce the food (and wine) we need. The new imperative is to grow energy, leaving the fossil residues of ancient photosynthesis—which, when burned, disfigure our earth’s atmospheric chemistry—buried deep underground. Turbines have come marching across the champaigns of Cádiz, to harvest the wind; Jerez farmers now plant solar panels, not sunflowers. Vineyards that in 1978 covered 22,500ha (55,600 acres) have now shrunk to 6,700ha (16,500 acres). A disaster? Spain isn’t short of open land, wind, and sunlight, so the turbines and panels could have marched off elsewhere; but the bulk vine plantings of the 1970s are no longer needed.1 As a consequence, there’s no fine-wine region in the world in the throes of a more significant transition than Jerez. It’s reimagining its past, ferociously.
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Atlántida Annius: Shocking wine
This wine shocked me. I’ve dropped in on the Jerezano reinvention a couple of times, and relished new sparkling wines and apothecary bodega relics, ever fresher and more expressive Sherries, and a range of unfortified whites (some limpid, some cloudy) that are bringing the long-forgotten terroir characters of the region’s greatest vineyards back to life. All of these, though, are white, most based on Palomino Fino. The Atlántida Annius is a red wine, and one of arresting character and quality. The blend includes Tintilla, Vigiriega Negra and Blanca, Palomino Negro, Jaén Negra, Melonera, and smaller amounts of other varieties, too. I tasted Annius alongside two pure Tintilla reds (2021 and 2022) from Atlántida. No wines have adjusted my aesthetic horizons more comprehensively this year. Few have been more delicious.
Their creator, Alberto Orte, is the co-owner (with his business partner Patrick Mata) of the New York-based Spanish wine importer Olé & Obrigado. Inspired by the 1807 ampelographical Ensayo sobre las Variedades de la Vid Commun que Vegetan en Andalucía of Simón de Rojas Clemente y Rubio (see WFW 23, pp.75–81), Orte replanted 26 of the forgotten varieties of the region in his 24ha (60 acres) of vineyards in Añina (between Macharnudo and Balbaína). Some of these varieties (like Vigiriega) had been lost since phylloxera; Orte managed to unearth them in his Campo Madre vineyard. He tried microvinifications, co-fermentation, and blends.
The reinvention of wine in the Jerez region has been well ventilated by the media, but Orte seems to have worked quietly, almost secretly—and to have got very far, very fast. We understand that many different grape varieties (perhaps 65 or more) were planted here before phylloxera; we know that few other vineyards in western Europe can claim the antiquity of the white-soiled vineyards near Jerez. The archeological site of Doña Blanca at Puerto de Santa María dates back almost 3,000 years to the period of Phoenician settlement in the Bay of Cádiz and contains winery remains. Many of Europe’s “oldest vineyards” start their clock with Roman cultivation—but when the Romans arrived here (and the name “Annius” refers to Añina, a name in turn derived from that of the prosperous local Roman Annii family), they were taking over the relay from Greeks, who had taken over from Carthaginians, in turn descendants of the Phoenicians.
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The two Tintilla siblings (both an opaque, saturated black-red) have extraordinary raspberry and sea-spray aromas, with violet notes, too; their coiled palate energy is also dense, urgent, fleshy, and grippy. “Red wines here are juicy,” says Alberto Orte, “whereas elsewhere in Spain they are often dry.” The Annius is less primary and vibrantly allusive aromatically, though its quiet complexities intrigue. On the palate, however, it’s almost overwhelming: engraved and intricate, like fine metalwork, but at the same time close-textured and detaining, harnessing an inner reserve of power and of plant and stone essences. None of my previous experiences of “Jerez” and of “Sherry” prepared me for this.
There is an entry-level range sold under the Vara y Pulgar name, too (“With Vara y Pulgar, we seek to convey the Marco de Jerez and the vintage”)—and Orte and Mata also own the Sherry-producing Bodegas Poniente, sited at the Aljibe property close to the Atlántico winery and home vineyards at Viña San Cristobal in Añina. There are magically light, refined, and salty Sherries waiting there in the quiet darkness. A delight, too, every bit as welcome. But less of a salutary shock.
Note
1. Save, perhaps, to season butts for the later storage of Scotch whisky—a key influence on the price of farmland within the Marco de Jerez today. It’s why Edrington, owner of The Macallan, took a 50% stake in Grupo Estévez (Valdespino and La Guita) in March 2023.
