Usually we use this section to highlight whatever is filling our glass at the moment. Maybe it’s just a pleasant wine to drink or something we enjoyed quickly in passing. Rarely have we used this to really badmouth a wine. Well, that day has come.
Ca N’Estruc’s Negre 2011 needs to be mentioned as it often gets somewhat favorable reviews from some drinkers. That’s fine if they enjoy it, but we assume it has to be more for the retail price of 3.50€ than the overall flavor profile. You see, we can really only best describe it as having a flavor that is akin to drinking rainwater that’s been left sitting outside in a rusty bucket for a month. It’s unpleasant and it leaves a foul finish in the mouth that doesn’t blend well with food no matter how hard you try.
If it’s really just the price that people love, then we’d much more recommend picking up bulk, “a granel” or “vi de pagès” that offer a much, much better value for the money.
This Ca N’Estruc Negre is part of (what we’ve found to be) the very strange DO Catalunya which is a medley of wines that you often find for cheap prices in the supermarket by wineries that are already in another, smaller DO, and are rarely good. Of course, then the rare winery like Clos d’Agon will pop in there with their highest level wines that are quite excellent. Like we said, it’s weird. Suffice to say, this recent wine will not be found again in our glass.
2 responses to “In The Glass: Ca N’Estruc Negre 2011”
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Dear Sirs,
I feel that your review is not quite fair, neither to the wine nor to the DO Catalunya.
In my view the wine is a simple young wine without special pretence, but for the price under 5 EUR one should hardly expect more refinement.
I know a bar/restaurant in Barcelona where it easily serves as a house wine and is quite popular.
This is of course not the wine for someone´s wedding or any special date, but good enough as a BBQ wine, to be paired with simple grilled red meats, sausages, burgers and like, and even with meat pies, to be drunk in the company of happy friends. Mature cheeses (that almost always improve any wine), or Spanish ¨jamon¨would do good too.
Speaking about DO Catalonia, it is nothing strange but serves mostly, to enable winemakers:
a) to experiment with grape varieties otherwise not allowed in the specific regional DO
b) to buy grapes from the vine-growers located outside the specific DO.
Some of the DO Catalunya wines are real masterpieces to be discovered.
There are many other simple young wines in this price range that are a great deal better from DO’s that have a purpose to exist. While I’m always up for re-tasting a wine, this vintage from three years ago was truly unappealing and one of those times where I couldn’t finish the bottle. And stating that it’s popular at a bar/restaurant in Barcelona only justifies my review as the restaurant scene in Barcelona is more focused on price over all else given that people who love flock to the tapa shops have little ability to discern what is decent wine so long as it’s cheap.
As for DO Catalunya, it absolutely should not exist. It was created solely for Torres to have a DO to toss parts of their production under that are outside of the other official regions. It should be the equivalent of Vin de Pays or Vi de la Terra Catalunya instead as it’s a complete kitchen sink of wineries and wines that isn’t deserving of the DO level given that there is no cohesion or attempt at consistent quality to it whatsoever. More specifically there should be four of these, VdT Lleida, Girona, Barcelona, and Tarragona or Occidental, Nord, Central, and Sud because Catalonia is far, far too diverse in soils and climates for something so overarching.
The other 11 DO’s in Catalonia exist to control a level of quality, not to be a dumping ground.