Purity and Purpose in Mesta: Talking Organic, Unoaked Wine with Andreas Kubach MW
I recently sat down with Mesta founder, Andreas Kubach M.W. to discuss the Mesta brand and how he finds balance in sustainability and healthy wine.
I was going about my usual tasting day when I came across the organic Mesta Tempranillo. The only thing I knew about it prior to tasting was its affordable price. With this in mind, I certainly wasn’t expecting what I was about to encounter. I was pleasantly surprised to be tasting a wine that was fresh, clean, and showed wonderful fruit purity. Once I dove further into the story of Mesta, it all began to make sense.
Mesta Tempranillo D.O. Ucles Organic, $10.80
This is an organic, vegan-friendly, unoaked Tempranillo that boasts bright red cherry and licorice aromas from the glass. It exudes fresh, red fruit notes on the forefront of a medium-bodied palate that quickly evolves with a complex oomph of savoury dried herbs and subtle woodsy flavours. A joyful journey on each sip! $10.80 LCBO #44591
Serving suggestion: This wine can be served at room temperature or with a slight chill. For your holiday dinner, this bottle can be comparable to cranberry sauce - pair it with turkey and stuffing to compliment with a freshness and savoury aspect.
Leah Spooner - How has your Master of Wine Career influenced the creation of Mesta?
Andreas Kubach MW - It’s quite a personal wine actually. The Mesta vineyards belong to a shareholder of my company who has been a friend of mine for a long time. He had this third -generation wine estate and asked me to come in and manage the wine side of the company. We had the long term view of a family business, but with out the bad elements of what a family business can be in the wine world. I saw the vineyards and they were stunning…the rolling hills of Castilla. It’s in the north where it’s much higher and cooler. When I tasted the wines that the family used to make historically, I was really impressed by the freshness and depth of fruit, real quality potential. And, I believe that Tempranillo is only suited to the cooler and higher parts of the county and these vineyards were just high enough to make fresh, varietally expressive Tempranillo. So, I knew there was a lot of potential for making something interesting here.
Then we started asking, what is the minimum cultural component that should be in a glass of wine? In my 15-20 years of wine experience (back then when we started this project) we had the perception that quality was starting to fall and not increase. Grape quality was starting to fall based on pressures of viticulture, higher yields, more competition, and wines were no longer interesting at the commercial price level. Then my other business partner, Sam Harrop MW, came in and we discussed - what is the most inexpensive wine we can make that we can be proud of? What wine would we be happy to take to our mothers? This is honest, good, healthy wine that has a certain personality, more grape personality than a terroir personality at that price but something that we are proud to produce. That was the moment Mesta was born.
Another factor was that I fell in love drinking wines by the glass and being able to have them ordered and lined up and figure out their origin. Nowadays, all wine by the glass tastes the same. The reason people have to even sit down and enjoy a glass of wine, we are losing that in our business. So, Mesta solved that problem in our world.
Sustainably farmed vineyards where grapes for Mesta are sourced
“I think wine drinkers, even non-professionals, do detect quality once it’s in the glass. Maybe not in words, but they have an intuitive understanding of what wines taste healthy and have healthy fruit. I think the success of Mesta is because people ultimately detect that it’s just good wine - it’s something people want to drink. It’s not complicated, it’s not complex, but it’s honest, good wine for everyday drinking.”
LS - Was this reflective in your decision to craft an unoaked Tempranillo, to showcase the quality of the fruit?
AK - Yes. We had a lot of discussions based on what you should expect from a wine at that price point and our conclusion was a very clear expression of varietal character and drinkability and freshness, but not necessarily one that has a complex character or add oak to it. We were frustrated with the varietal labelling of inexpensive Spanish wine where the wines didn’t show the personality of that grape, and Tempranillo is a very noble grape.
The company I co-founded is based on a number of shared views where we all have a certain obsession with texture and just dislike like oak tannins. I’m a bit alone with this in the world but I think most humans don’t like the texture of oak. The tannins of the grape give you a nice backbone and tannin structure to the wines, and it’s healthy. With Mesta, our most inexpensive wine, we wanted to build a wine on grape tannin not oak tannin. This even translates to our top parcel wines from very old vineyards they’re built on freshness and deep fruit and grape skin tannin.
LS - Do you think that is an option that more winemakers are considering? And, do you think there’s an upsurge in consumer demand for unoaked wine?
AK - It’s not universal, and it’s not in all markets. I think we need people like you to explain things beyond how wine is made, and why it tastes like it does, why does it exist even? We’ve made people believe that wines taste better because they’ve spent more time in oak. In Spain it’s worse, because the leading appellation of this country, Rioja, has been driven by industrial producers who were obsessed with creating a house style that was based on aging other than the prominence of the grapes. Generations of wine experts have been taught that Spanish wine is based on oak aging, which it is not. That is only one tradition, not THE tradition. Many consumers have misconceptions about Spanish wine, because when you have a lack of fruit and high amount of oak, after you age the wine, it becomes under-wined, not just over-oaked. So, we are trying to reclaim the importance of not just aroma but also fruit structure.
LS - Mesta is named after the ancient alliance of sheep shepherds that protected the migration trails the sheep, and the vineyards are set within these protected lands. Can you explain how that correlates with your brand?
AK - If you drive around the vast area there are very few cultural cues we can use. But, sheep happen to be around. It’s a very honest and humble animal and we are trying to make an honest wine so we identify with it even further. It’s a romantic story about old Spain and the circle of nature that we resonate with.
LS - I know sustainability is important to you in your winemaking and viticulture. How does that reflect in Mesta?
AK - There’s been a lot of greenwashing over these past years and the whole term of sustainability is being emptied of content. The entire team has seen so much in the wine business and seeing the risk of vineyards disappearing amongst the lack of environmental sustainability but also economic sustainability, we wanted to find a way to make our presence sustainable so we can continue doing it for our lifetime but also be happy with what we are doing every morning when we wake up. With the cost pressure, it’s very easy to become cynical in this world because the more you lie, the more it benefits you. The biggest wineries in Spain are kept out of jail because of luck and politics. The system creates an incentive to lie, whether it’s about grape variety or aging. We wanted to build something that was sensible enough and strong enough from an economic point of view that we can be happy with it. Landing that took years, but Mesta is the most sustainable wine we can produce.
We have to consider what is the maximum yield of grapes that we can produce, how much water should you use, and where is the economic balance in that. Where is the sweet spot of getting quality without pushing the environment too far. We produce grapes at 6000 kilos per hectare, and at that level you barely need any drip irrigation to sustain the vineyards, which is sustainable. Most entry level Spanish wines are produced at yields of 18,000-20,000 kilos per hectare which is made with pumping water underneath the soil with 600m deep wells which is extractive agriculture.
“If we are able to sell Mesta at this price all around the world, all the grapes used for Mesta can be reasonably sustainably grown. We don’t invest in anything that won’t contribute to the quality and sustainability of the wine. There’s no empty marketing; we base our success with what can be perceived in the glass.”
LS - With climate change, does it make these decisions harder to make, and are they ones you have to constantly re-assess?
AK - Dramatically so, especially within the last few years. We initially made the wines at my partners’ estate, but we manage other vineyards, and even that wasn’t enough with this vintage because of the dramatic fall in yields. So, we’ve moved further north to create Mesta with grapes from our estates and other growers. So we’ve been expanding and looking for grapes that aren’t just organic but sustainably grown vineyards. It’s harder because of the dramatic climate conditions, with dryness, rain, and disease pressure. There are regulations for organic wines but that doesn’t necessarily mean more sustainable, so we put a lot of weight behind the sustainable aspect.
The price consumers around the world are willing to pay for the term organic is not high enough for most producers to make a living. Even monopoly buyers desire organic products but push for the cheapest price. It’s a contradiction of terms. If you’re asking for organic at a small cost, that’s not sustainable at all. It’s getting harder and harder.
Organic vineyards where grapes are sourced for Mesta
“Mesta doesn’t try to dress up its grapes. It likes to derive its flavour and aromas from the fruit quality. You don’t have to be a wine expert to detect if a wine is made from healthy grapes, and that should be the minimum requirement for any honest wine.”
LS - While you’re looking at new vineyards as the result of climate change, does the search for new grape varieties come with that?
AK - Yes, we have re-discovered Garnacha which I really like. Interestingly Garnacha is of spanish origin and the most valuable and interesting clones of Garnacha have been lost due to inudstrialisation, so we had to go to Sardinia to find clones, where it’s known as Cannonau. So we are doing multi-clone Garnacha plantings.
The original plantings of my partners vineyards in the 80’s and 90’s used a productive clone, which isn’t always the best for quality. So we are replanting them with a different clones of Tempranillo that needs less water. This way we can optimize the yields instead of minimizing them and find a healthier, sustainable balance.
Other interesting varieties are Garthiano, a Spanish variety that is late ripening with high acidity. Also, Touriga Nacional, which didn’t exist prior but I love it so we might become a Touriga producer.
LS - What else would you like consumers to know about Mesta?
AK - If you just pay attention to what is in your glass, our hope is that people will drink less and better…without asking them to become wine geeks.