Wine of the week — Spanish Wine Collective

M de Salado: an authentic mosto from Bodegas Salado in Umbrete.

Variety: Garrido Fino

ABV: 12%

Mosto is a wine tradition and culture in the south-west of Spain. In the autumn it’s common to see a hay mosto sign outside bars, signalling that this young, low alcohol wine is now available.

Mosto is literally must, or unfermented grape juice. But in the provinces of Huelva and Seville the must undergoes a short fermentation to create light and refreshing wines.

There’s something I love about enjoying these honest and authentic young wines every year in ordinary bars and taverns.

I tasted the still and sparkling wines of Bodegas Salado last year at Fenavin, Spain’s national wine fair, and this week I had the opportunity to visit the bodega in the small town of Umbrete, situated in the Aljarafe region to the west of Seville.

Founded in 1810, it’s one of the oldest bodegas in Andalusia, and the last surviving commercial winemaker in a town that had 40 bodegas in the middle of the 20th century. The town’s wine economy used to be based on these small almacenistas, who made base wines for the soleras of the sherry producers in the Marco de Jerez

All the wines at Bodegas Salado are made with the Garrido Fino grape, a variety native to the Aljarafe.

Grown on albariza soils, it’s a mid-to-late ripening variety whose aromatic qualities are preserved by an Atlantic influence which keeps nights cooler in a region with increasingly higher summer temperatures.

Garrido Fino is considered to represent the essence of the bodega, and their mosto wine, M de Salado, is our featured wine this week.

After a night-time harvest to keep the grapes cool, the juice is fermented in stainless steel with its own yeasts. With minimal filtration it’s slighty cloudy from traces of the lees, while on the nose, green fruit and herbaceous notes predominate. With good volume, balance and fresh acidity, it finishes with a hint of bitterness and a slightly saline tang. I have drunk plenty of mosto over the years and this one is top-notch and quite delicious.

To taste it you will have to go to Umbrete and get yourself a bottle or a 2 or 5 litre garrafa from Bodegas Salado’s despacho de vinos.

The best time time to do this is after 30 November*, because as the saying goes ‘por San Andrés, el mosto vino es’.

* St Andrew’s Day. In Spain it’s celebrated as the day of San Andrés Apóstol.