For many years Wine & Spirits Digest has held an annual tasting for Wines of La Mancha, the largest wine-producing region of Spain. The pandemic disrupted things, but we’re almost back to normal, and this year La Mancha appears with a new Don Quixote logo and as part of a larger event sponsored by the European Union, including a fine selection of wines from GREECE and from Northeastern Italy. The Italian component emanates from a marketing effort called UVIVE – The Unione Consorzi Vini Veneti. Though none of the three sent out winemakers to search for importers, the EU did prepare a beautiful presentation and hired local wine guy, Aaron Chuang, who has spent years collecting qualifications, including sponsored visits to all three areas on show today.

This event took the entire afternoon, 4 hours, as Aaron (AA) told all he knows about La Mancha, and Greece, and the Veneto. I must say though, the time went by quite quickly as Aaron unpacked the latest revisions to the European Classification System for wine and then talked everyone through 15 wines, 5 from each of the three regions. The regions are fascinating, so full of history and beautiful destinations, from the vast plains of Central Spain to the pristine whitewash and Mediterranean blue of Santorini, to the precipitous hills above Lake Garda, Aaron has seen them all and shared his passion tirelessly.

La Mancha has a reputation for producing oceans of cheap wine, and it may be tempting to turn up your nose at these low-priced Airens and un-pedegried Tempranillos, not to mention the climate, which is hot continental and increasingly hostile to viticulture. But these wines today were surprisingly well made and deserve our respect for solid value. For me the most impressive was the Moscatel 2022 from La Villa Real. An off-dry expression with bitterness and sweetness balancing the varietal orange-peel and apricot. This wine is just what entry-level drinkers need to set them on the path of wine knowledge.

Greece is the myth-shrouded cradle of European wine culture, with its roots deep in ancient history all the way down to the Minoans, the last matriarchal society in the Mediterranean. A millennium and a half later came the golden age of Greek Wine in the Roman Empire, and later still, for hundreds of years Greece’s wine trade languished within the confines of the Turkish Empire. Greek wine suffered an early stigma in the west because of its association with Retsina, a style of white wine flavored with pine resin, which leaves a distinct aroma and flavor said to have dissuaded the Persians from pillaging wine stocks in ancient times…

The retsina stereotype colored Greece well beyond the end of the 20th Century, before new plantings of international varieties tipped the balance toward modern vinification techniques. Now Greece’s wine industry is thriving, most significantly on native varieties, all with barely pronounceable names, like Agiorgitiko (in English the g becomes a j) and Moschofilero (in English, the ch sounds like a k, and emphasis falls on the 3rd syllable, fil). Both these

These and many more Greek wines began to appear in Taiwan some years ago, but they could still use a big boost from the EU, and from Aaron, who visited Greek vineyards in Santorini, and the Greek mainland, but seems to long most for a visit to Samos… me too. Let’s go.

My favorite from today’s selections was Santorini Assyrtiko, for its lime and honeysuckle, its slightly saline minerality, and its long gentle finish like a Cycladean breeze over the breakwater below Oia.

U.V.I.V.E, Unione Consorzi Vini Veneti, unites a conference of Consorzi near Venice and Verona, but the wineries on show today hardly need help building their brands. Mionetto, Allegrini, Tommasi, these are some of the best-known producers in the world, let alone the Veneto, and their wines have been well represented here in Taiwan for decades. Regrettably, I was called away before this last part of the tasting got going, so I consulted my friend and fellow wine-lover, Raynor Weekend, and as I expected, he liked best the Allegrini Soave Clasicco 2021, perhaps because it so exceeded his expectations (and mine). Soave has been poorly represented in Asia during my tenure here, usually disappointingly light in body, negligible aromas, flabby texture and acidity, and no finish worth remembering. But not this one: Raynor relays this note – Pale gold with lemon and orange on the nose, refreshingly high acidity, and a gentle finish trailing to light salinity and umami. Overall, the high point of the Italian section.

Thanks again to Noah and his team from WSD for putting together a smooth-running presentation that could easily have been far too long. The meal in the middle was very rejuvenating, and the abundance of swag from the European Wine Ambassadors was nice to see again after years of pretty thin pickins… Aaron did a find job with a difficult presentation, sharing freely from his depth of theoretical knowledge and personal experience in all three regions/countries.