https://b2w.wine/raul-moreno-yague-alchemist-of-andalucia-profile/
Recently, I had the opportunity to taste Raul Moreno's El Dia, a dry, non-fortified Chardonnay from the Jerez region. I was so impressed by the wine's structure, complexity, and acidity that I had to look up Raul's eponymous project in Andalucia and learn more about the man himself. What I learned seemed quite crazy. Raul had one of the most interesting and diverse (yet incredibly focused) come-up stories in wine that I have heard, so I had to reach out and interview him.
I want to share with you the article related to this interview. It's a lot, but I broke it down into two parts. One discusses the winemaker's journey through the world of wine, from Andalucia to England, the U.S., Australia, with a multitude of harvest experiences, and back to Andalucia. The second part focuses on Raul's iconoclast winery, creating a new thesis on what Southern Spanish wines can be, utilizing the albariza soils to great advantage and producing wines unheard of in the region.
Also, here are the tasting notes for 2022 El Dia Chardonnay
100% Chardonnay from Jerez de la Frontera.
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Manual harvest of north-facing vineyard in ‘Pago Carrascal’ at 5 tons of yield per hectare. Whole bunch pressing in a basket press with 550 liters of extraction. Hyper-oxidation of the must. The unsettled must is fermented in second- and third-year tight grain oak barrels of Damy, François Freres & Cavin tonnelleries. The wine is aged with full lees for ten months with only one batonnage in mid-winter when lees are fully compacted. Unfiltered & unfined. Sulfured just one time just before bottling at 50ppm total. The wine is only racked once before bottling and undergoes complete malolactic fermentation.
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Tasting Notes:
Golden color, hazy, unfiltered
Aromas of fruitcake, powdered milk, ripe peach/pear, fermented mango skins, tangerine, smoke, mint, thyme. Textured fine-weighted phenolics have a satiny presence on the palate. The wine possesses a high acidity and a flinty, smoky minerality.
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An excellent Chardonnay from warm Andalucía, balanced between intensity and fresh acidity. Shows the tension and intensity of a great Burgundy with the wildness and unexpectedness of a great warm climate natural wine, reminiscent of a great Island wine
by Between2Worlds369