Tag Archives: Patrick Mata

Wine of the week: Carro Tinto 2019

carro tinto
Carro Tinto 2019/$10-$17

The Spanish red, with its unlikely combination of monastrell, merlot, and syrah, is just the thing for a cold winter’s night

What do you call a Spanish red wine made with the unlikely combination of monastrell, syrah, and merlot? A wine of the week, of course.

The Carro Tinto 2019 ($12, purchased, 14.5%) comes from the top-notch importer Ole & Obrigado, whose passion for quality and affordable wines matches my own. As such, Patrick Mata and company know exactly where to look for value, and this wine shows how the process works. Monastrell is a particularly Spanish grape; syrah and merlot are not, so the combination offers something that might not interest others.

In this, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. You can taste the merlot — lots of blueberry fruit – but this is not a fruit bomb or a a Parkerized wine made to get a score. Instead, it has a hint of spice and smoke, some length in the finish, as well as some of monastrell’s herbal quality.

And though the alcohol is high, it doesn’t get in the way. Call it Spanish oomph – something I don’t exactly know how to explain, but that fits here.

This is food wine – stick a piece of beef in the slow cooker, let it make the house smell terrific, and drink it with the wine.

Imported by Ole & Obrigado

studio microphone

Winecast 57: Patrick Mata of Ole & Obrigado and imported wine during the pandemic

patrick mata
Patrick Mata, right, and Alberto Orte of Ole & Obrigado. “American companies are paying the tariff. How does that punish Europe?”

Patrick Mata:  U.S. companies are paying the wine tariff – how does that punish the European Union for airplane subsidies?

Want to make sense of the European wine tariffs, which seem to make no sense at all? Then listen to Patrick Mata, whose Ole & Obrigado is one of the leading Spanish wine importers to the U.S.

“I thought we might go out of business,” says Mata, whose company specializes in importing quality, $15 or less wine from Spain and Portugal. “Our margin is 30 percent on a bottle of wine, and the tariff is 25 percent. How were we going to stay in business?”

The good news is that Ole & Obrigado did, despite the tariff and the pandemic (which clobbered its restaurant business). Sales fell only 20 percent in 2020, which Mata considered a victory of immense proportions.

Mata, a long-time friend of the blog, was open and honest about how the tariff and the pandemic have hurt the wine business. Among the topics we talked about:

• Why raising prices to cover the tariff doesn’t work, and why it especially doesn’t work for the $15 wines that Ole specializes in.

• How to give back during a crisis, and why there should be more to the wine business than just making money.

• What Americans are drinking during the pandemic, and why it’s a victory for Big Wine at the expense of small producers — another unintended consequence of the tariff.

Click here to download or stream the podcast, which is about 15 minutes long and takes up 9 megabytes. Quality is mostly excellent – Zoom didn’t act up this time.

Wine of the week: Gordo 2012

gordoThe Gordo is a Spanish red blend where cabernet sauvignon adds character instead of detracting from it

The Spanish do not need to make wine with the so-called international grapes. If you make some of the best tempranillo and albarino in the world, why bother with cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay? Because, sometimes, as the Gordo demonstrates, international grapes used correctly can make the native grapes that much better.

The Gordo ($12, purchased, 14%) comes from my pals at Ole Imports, perhaps the best Spanish wine importer in the country. And, even more importantly, the wine is a labor of love for Ole impresario Patrick Mata – a tribute to his father, whom he called Gordo, and to his family’s long gone winery.

This Spanish red is a blend of 70 percent monastrell and 30 percent cabernet, and when I saw that on the label I almost didn’t buy it. Why ruin the monastrell with lesser quality Spanish cabernet?

But the cabernet doesn’t overwhelm the monastrell; rather, it adds structure and complexity to the monastrell’s fruit and spice. Look for a surprisingly rich wine for the price, as well as lots of black fruit. Highly recommended, and a candidate for the 2018 $10 Hall of Fame. And always, always trust great importer to provide great wine.

Wine of the week: Zestos Blanco 2010

Wine of the week: Zestos Blanco 2010There are a couple of importers whose wines are so trustworthy that the Wine Curmudgeon will buy them regardless of what’s in the bottle. Kermit Lynch, of course, for French wine, and Ole Imports and Patrick Mata for Spanish wine.

Mata’s passion for Spanish wine is famous, and his palate is exceptional. Which is why I trust Ole implicitly. Otherwise, a wine like the Zestos would raise all sorts of red flags. It’s a white wine from a region in Spain best known for red wine, and the red wine doesn’t have all that great a reputation. Its color is different, sort of off-yellow, and it’s made with a grape, the malvar, that is obscure even for those of us who appreciate obscure. Malvar, grown only in that part of Spain, is not even listed in the incredibly comprehensive Winegrape Glossary.

My faith, not surprisingly, was rewarded. The Zestos ($10, purchased) is unique, though it had some similarity to the Gascon wines I like, including a little white grapiness. It is simple, but definitely Spanish in style — less fruit than the Gascon wines (some lemon, maybe) with a stone fruit pit kind of finish. One tasting note described the finish as bitter almonds, and that works, too.

Drink this chilled on its own or with a any week night dinner that calls for white wine. It’s a candidate for the 2013 $10 Hall of Fame, and is highly recommended. Just don’t expect it to taste like something you’ve tried before.