Txakoli Wine Guide: a great Spanish white
Basque wines are certainly still virgin soil for the Italian public, however, Txakoli is a small jewel of Spanish enology that deserves all your attention among white wines. It is a white wine that recalls these lands, it has all the flavors of the sea, it is fresh, salty, lashing, and sometimes wild. It is not a structured or alcoholic wine, quite the opposite: it is graceful, lean, but with great personality, acid momentum, and absurd minerality.
Organoleptic characteristics of Txakoli wine
It resembles the Albariño but is slightly greener as a charm. The bouquet is algid with all the citrus fruits of the world, declined with great finesse. Flowers, memories of delicate aromatic herbs, and then iodine and yellow melon to close. Pungent and sharp, it leaves no room for softness or overripe fruit or spices and wood, because it is rarely a wine that ages in new barriques.
On the palate it is a sweep of salt and sea, alternating lime and thyme, weaving a cloth encrusted with salt. It is a sunny, dynamic wine, which focuses on thickness and a lot on width and muscles, since it does not have any. As mentioned, it rarely ages in new wood, but it ages in steel to maintain its innate freshness and is usually ready within the year to be drunk. With a little refinement in the bottle, it smooths the edges, but it is not vinified to last for decades, but to give immediate pleasure, especially if you combine it with the seafood cuisine of the Basque country.
Types of Txakoli
As mentioned, it is a wine to be drunk young, lean and unpretentious. It is always found dry, sometimes embellished with a delightful and very light effervescence in the pet nat style or as Muscadet once was. The comparison with Muscadet could come naturally: they are both children of the sea, clear and roaring wines, but while Muscadet rests on noble lees, Txakoli is produced in a drier way and does not aspire to such penetrating depth. And there is nothing wrong with that, not for this reason it should be considered a minor wine.
The name in Basque language is Handarribi Zuri and we find it in the Bizcaiko Txacolina denominations blended with the Folle Blanch grape and in the Arabako Txakolina blended with the Handarribi Beltza grape.
Txakoli Food Pairings
The salt in the wine calls the salt of fish, seafood, tapas with olives, anchovies, but it is also excellent with chicken curry, fish and chips, amatriciana, spaghetti with clams, pumpkin tortelli, pasta al pesto, spaghetti carbonara, pad thai, paella.