Wine of the week: Zestos Blanco 2016

The Zestos Blanco demonstrates that $10 wine is not incompatible with subtlety and sophistication

One of the things that Big Wine strives for is consistency from vintage to vintage, so that the wine tastes exactly the same regardless of the year the grapes were picked. This can be an advantage, so you won’t be surprised if a harvest is off in some way.

But it can also lead to boring and inoffensive wine, which is where the Zestos Blanco ($10, purchased, 12.5%) fits in. It’s about as far from Big Wine as possible, and there is a noticeable vintage difference this time around.

Zestos is a Spanish label from the always dependable Ole Imports, and it has just three wines – a red, rose, and this white. And if that wasn’t un-Big Wine enough, it’s made with the malvar grape, about as geeky as Spanish grapes get. The Ole notes say malvar is somewhere between chardonnay and sauvignon blanc; given how different those grapes are, you can tell how difficult it is to describe.

This vintage, while still clean and fresh, is heavier than the 2015, so it’s not for porch sipping. It needs food – Thanksgiving would do quite nicely, but any roast poultry (or even salmon) would work. It’s also not as tart as 2015, which means less lemon fruit but more of something like kiwi.

Highly recommended, and just not because it’s so odd. The Zestos Blanco demonstrates that $10 wine can be just as subtle, sophisticated, and interesting as bottles that cost twice as much.