Bodegas Chozas Carrascal gets Vino de Pago status
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Bodegas Chozas Carrascal has been cleared to enter Spain's emergent Vino de Pago system, ending a five-year wait.
Valencia-based Chozas Carrascal became officially moved up from the DO Utiel Requena classification to Vino de Pago (VP) at the end of last month.
It is the 13th Spanish winery to reach VP. Membership criteria includes wines made only from the grapes grown on the estate, and those which have won themselves an international reputation for quality.
Founded in the early 1990s by Julián López, Chozas Carrascal has 40 hectares of vines and its wines sell well in the US.
The new classification means it can use VP on its flagship wine, El Cabernetf, made from Cabernet Franc grapes. This wine previously fell outside of the DO Utiel Requena rules.
Alongside international varieties, the estate is doing a lot of work on Bobal, possibly the ‘comeback king’ amongst Valencia’s native grapes. It also makes sparkling wine under the Denominación Cava.
Spain introduced the ‘Pago’ class with its 2003 national wine law, but regional governments must ratify the classification before wineries can use it. So far, only Castilla-La Mancha, Navarra and Valencia have done so.
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Written by John Radford
John Radford, writer, broadcaster and Spanish wine specialist, died on 19 October 2012, aged 65. He was co-chair of Spain for the Decanter World Wine Awards since its inception and a longstanding Decanter contributor. He started out in wine retail at Vintage Wines in Nottingham, and soon discovered that he had a gift as a wine educator and communicator. He spent 13 years as a presenter on BBC local radio, while building his reputation as an expert on the wines of Spain. In 1998 his first book, The New Spain, won the Glenfiddich and Lanson awards. He followed this up with The Wines of Rioja and Cook Espana, Drink Espana (with Mario Sandoval). In 1996 was elected to the Gran Orden de Caballeros de Vino.