Thatcher's Imports Spain Trip: Live Blogging Day 3 - Domaine DexAie
Day Three: Domaine DexAïe
Visiting a wine region, whether it be Napa, Piedmont, Bordeaux, Martinborough or any other, part of the experience of visiting a winery is allowing yourself to be captive in the moment. Often times, when tasting the same wines experienced at an estate at, say, a restaurant or at home, too often the wines seem quite…different? Lacking a spark? Yes, often times they do deliver, but surely you’ve experienced this phenomenon.
The thought for this exercise for me somehow drifted to Kenzo Estate, one of the most bonkers production stories I’ve ever heard in Napa. Sure, Tsujimoto Kenzo has all the money in the world, but fully planting a vineyard, then hiring David Abreu to tell you to rip it all out, blast out some bedrock and start over, then hiring Heidi Peterson Barrett to make the wine…that was enough. Add in the entire estate being feng shui enough that all the doors line up, each blade of grass and vine row neatly manicured, I mean it’s truly something to behold. The wines are very good, but in this beautiful environment, their performance can be raised, as your sensory devices are on overload, antennae up for whatever sensation follows.
So, en route to the Sierra de Gredos to visit Domaine DexAïe at what looked like[in photos] like the top of the world, I mulled this theory, wondering if it could apply to an estate helmed by two of the most sincere, kind people in the business who seemed entirely in love with each other, even through a Zoom call.
We descended the switchback hills, driving through Burgohondo (maybe Allen Meadows’ summer home?) en route to Navarrevisca on a cloudy, misty day. A few of our traveling companions’ stomachs twisted with the hills, and the sight of Carmen and Emmanuel of DexAie waving to us was a welcome sight.
After a quick introduction to our group, we piled into three SUVs, a couple eyes shifting apprehensively at the thought of boarding another vehicle so soon after the 4-hour trek. Emmanuel grinned broadly as we bounced over the boulders and ruts in the raw dirt trails, the back seat piled with four women of our group.
As he stopped, and we tumbled out of his truck, an audible gasp rang out from the group. Boulders seem to have been dropped all around by Roald Dahl’s giants, stacked in a way that no human could have done alone. The vine rows seem to have been scraped into the mountain, clinging on to the few grains of sand that topped the quartz & granite bedrock. This was…a holy s*** moment.
One of our group, an experienced sommelier as well as a veteran of several harvests, bobbed and weaved down a hill as though drawn by a mysterious force toward a rock assembly that resembled a space ship. Each little berm brought a new vista, and you could hear her go, “Wow…wow! OH MY GOD WOW!”
As a sucker for sunsets, that was the only thing missing in the day as clouds crept in like cold pillows around us. Carmen and Emmanuel pointed out features in every tiny little plot, showing us eventually to their “Grand Cru” vineyard, where ancient vines in tiny little “gardens” - remember, this is a winery formed by the collection of some 390-ish miniature vineyards (Emmanuel informed us that the average vineyard size in Navarrevisca is 0.3 hectares) - sit in gnarled little piles. They looked grand, still, and another of our team pointed out that some looked like they had been charred a bit. “Ah, but you see, it’s basically the vine exhaling - we prune it, and the vine purges all the waste, so it can start again.”
There’s no wanting for water up here, so even with minimal sandy (well-drained) soils, the vines get all they need. Emmanuel explained that they cut four canes, knowing that at some point in this wildly extreme area, they will probably have to cut one of those four off to allow the remaining three to survive.
A single tractor worked nearby, as the couple is installing stakes (where possible) to aid the baby vines they’ve planted; they used their own material, and as we trekked through the vineyard, Carmen pointed to zip ties loosely hung on selected vines, denoting the individuals they thought had something special inside of them. Hell, Emmanuel even had a favorite vine, a wrangled old boy with four spread arms and legs ascending out of its belly. Nearby, a beautiful few dozen flowers sprung out of what I’d like to call a tree, but was really a six foot tall tree. “I saw these at Artadi,” I mentioned, “What kind of tree is this?” Emmanuel smiled; “It’s a peach tree; a very special kind of peach, that ripens very late, but has amazing acidity.” He explained it’s terrific for preserves, but then paused, and leaned in toward me with a wry smile. “This last harvest? One f***ing peach. I said to everyone, ‘That’s MY f***ing peach!’“
Reluctantly piling back into the cars after getting a fair bit of exercise bounding like
jackrabbits from peak to peak, we drove carefully back to the house of their business partner where lunch awaited, prepared by chef Carlos Casillas of Restaurante Barro - apparently the youngest Michelin-starred chef in Spain.
The real show for us, why we traveled four hours on a swaying bus through switchback hills, practiced bouldering in SUVs, scurried around magnificent vistas, was what those gnarled old boys could produce: the wine. After a nice dose of Champagne Chavost to begin, the first (of two) red was produced, out of magnum. Dubbed “Alto Alberche” (2023), after the local region we sat within, this is “A vision of the valley,” Emmanuel explains. Immediately attention snapped to; 60-80 year old vines making a “village” wine is laughable, but Garnacha from such a site was not lean, but not fat; beautifully-focused, a Chambolle-esque pinkish-red fruit tone came down with stony, crystalline minerals. Literally a goldilocks kind of wine - not too big, not too small, just right.
After a good bit of chatter Emmanuel rounded the corner with another mag, and asked for our attention. He seemed like he immediately found the idea humorous, and just chuckled. “Ok…this is 2023 Camilleja...nothing else to say!”
Before we go any further, let me just point out that the name of the estate, DexAie, was an old vineyard war cry translating to, “God Help Us!” Whatever was needed - sun, rain, heat, cold, relief - “God Help Us!” The tireless efforts put in since Carmen and Emmanuel arrived five years ago, coming to March 2026 when their first commercial release reaches our shores, is not lost on them. Their boundless energy and positivity is obvious to see, and they are so clearly humbled by both the experience and what they have adopted in the form of these ancient vineyards. In other words, they are as awed by the wines these vines could produce as we were about to be.
Camilleja is, well...let me start off easy. Somehow every single form of mineral got hit for me: quartz gives that “crystalline” thing in my mind, but there was chalk, light and dark rock, sandstone, gravel, chalk, the works. The fruits seemed both fresh and dried, with delicate flowers dropping down American Beauty style.
Emmanuel produced a bit later a magnum of their 2021; he had told me earlier that, in their first vintage - ’21 - they made three barrels, one of the barrels a new one. “I discarded it - I hated it,” he admitted. So, two barrels it is. The 2021 presented a bit broader, even stocky, with less ethereal aromatics and hints of green spice.
Reflecting on the 2021, my thoughts took me to what so many producers have told me about vineyard transitions. Specifically, that when changing from conventional to, say, biodynamics or organics, there can be a five year adjustment period. Beyond that, getting to know each plot’s characteristics - especially in a locale where “flat” doesn’t have a translation - can take time, as well. So when I think about the 2021, which, recently-attained perspective aside, is a very drinkable wine, my eyes widened as I considered that a mere two years later, Carmen and Emmanuel produced what personally is the most singular example of Grenache I have had since my first taste of Rayas. And even then, it’s a comPLETELY different profile than a Rhone wine.
So, yeah, I was moderately terrified of being captive in the moment, and falling into the trap of overstating a wine’s class just by being there. I’ll let you know, again, once I get back to the states and taste.
We’re en route to our last stop of the trip, Bodega Cerron (Stratum Wines), and though we’re all tired (I’m the only currently conscious passenger), we’ve remarked how on each visit, there has been a specific feeling, an expression in one or more wines from each producer, that made us say, “I’ve never in my life had something that good, that unique. I know that we’re at extreme risk of experiencing that in about one hour’s time, but for now, I’ll be dreaming of Garnacha, the BFG’s boulders, and two of my favorite people in the wine industry.
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