NEW SPANISH WHITES

When I interviewed Peter Sisseck – the great Danish-born, Spain-based winemaker behind Dominio de Pingus – among others – for Decanter last year (‘Producer profile’, March 2021 issue), talk turned at some point to his latest project. Why, I asked him, had his search for a vineyard to make a white wine partner to Pingus taken him so long and why, after all that time, had he settled on vineyards in Jerez? ‘Because the greatest fino is the greatest white wine in Spain,’ Sisseck said. ‘This crazy place where you’re almost in Africa but you make these fantastic fresh wines.’

Sisseck’s answer could be read in two ways. Was he paying a very big compliment to the perennially undervalued virtues of dry Sherry? Or was this a subtle dig at the quality of the rest of Spain’s white wine production? (I mean, how high can your opinion of Spanish white wine be if you believe its best example is a style that doesn’t even fall under most people’s definition of white wine?)

In a way, both interpretations apply, although Sisseck was quick to point out that his views on the matter have moved on since he bought and started working at Bodega San Francisco Javier in Jerez de la Frontera. As he said: ‘Of the early Galician wines, I wasn’t thinking, “whoah, I wanna go to Galicia!”. Until 2011 or 2012, I was never freaking out over white wine in Spain. [But] now I can see what they’re doing.’

Sisseck’s attitudinal trajectory is very far from unique among Spanish wine lovers. It’s always been a country in which red wine has come first, where extraordinary white wine has been the exception rather than the rule. Over the past decade (in Sisseck’s view) or two (in mine), however, there has been a creative flourishing of white winemaking, one that goes hand in hand with developments in red wine, but which is very far from being overshadowed by them.

‘Until 2011 or 2012,– Peter Sisseck