Food With A Point

It was one of those days in early March when you really wonder why the heck you live in a city with such horrendous weather. It’s just not humane to expect anything to survive, much less function, in what seems like 18 feet of blowing snow with a -20 wind chill.

In moments like this, there is only one solution – pretend it’s warm where you are. In my case, that means drinking something white, tart and fun. It turns out that I had a friend who was pretty much on the same page so we decided to meet up at Vents du Sud, a Basque restaurant, and open my bottle of Txacoli, and then tons of jewels from his cellar. But my wine is the point of this post, - next time we'll talk about yours Martin.

Txacoli (tcha-coh-lee) is traditional wine of the Basque country in Spain. And there is a reason why they call it a country when it’s a region – the Basque’s think in their own way and have done so for over a thousand years. In fact, their native language, Euskara, is still fluently spoken and is one of the few in the world that doesn’t have roots in the Indo-European languages. And the Basque like the fact that no one gets them, because they get themselves and that’s just fine. So when it comes to their wine, the same can be said – different is good.

Txacoli de Guetaria is a Spanish appellation or DO and is located near San Sebastian on the northern coast of the Iberian Peninsula. The white wines are exclusively made from the Ondarrabi Zuri grape and the reds from the Ondarribi Beltza. The production is small because this extremely regional product is only now starting to pique the interest of those outside the villages.

The wine we had was a white, the 2006 Txakoli Txomin Etxaniz. The alcohol content is an easy 11% making this the optimal summer wine. It is a very pale yellow, almost light green. On the nose there are unmistakable minerals but some floral and some tart fruits. In mouth, we noticed green apples and lemon candy but a slightly sour finish. What was most interesting was there was a density in the flavours but not in the weight of the wine, surprising especially since our bottle displayed the characteristic light effervescence of a good Txacoli.

I wish I could tell you that this wonderful product is available here, or even at the LCBO, but it’s not. I got mine through someone who took a bus to NYC. But believe me, the goodness of Txacoli certainly makes me consider the bus as a travel option for my trips to the Big Apple…