Not to be confused with claret, or, for that matter, clairette, clarete is a wine style of which you may well never have heard, but of which you can expect to hear a lot more.
Although clarete is similar to rosé, it is not simply rosé by another name. By definition, it is a wine made from co-fermented red and white grapes, which are all picked at the same time and thrown into a fermenting vessel together. Clarete is vinified for structure and aged longer than a typical rosé (sometimes in barrel, sometimes in tank on lees) for added complexity. Wines made in this recherché style can appear anywhere from pale pink to deep garnet in colour depending on maceration time, grape varieties and the ratio of white to red grapes.
While in many wine regions the co-ferment winemaking tradition has lapsed into obscurity, one place in which it continues to prosper is northern Spain. In bars fanning out from the city of Valladolid, clarete continues to be consumed as a light, refreshing, not-quite-white, not-quite-red. In regions like Rioja, where notable clarete-making villages include San Asensio (where delirious locals entertain themselves by being sprayed with clarete from a water cannon all day), Cordovin, Badarán, Azofra and Alesanco, stalwart defenders of this most tradition of wine styles include Honório Rubio and David Moreno. Cigales, just north of the Duero river, is also well-known for its clarete, while it is an historic and well-recognised style in parts of the Canary Islands. Likewise, in Portugal – more on which below…
Clarete's history
Perhaps the spiritual home of clarete, however, is Ribera del Duero, where its association with the Burgos sub-region goes back to the Roman era. Like many vinegrowing regions, Ribera del Duero would once upon a time have been planted with a mix of red and white grape varieties. Historically, this was a means of ensuring production every year despite the meteorological vagaries of the vintage.
All that changed in Ribera in the 1960s and 1970s when plantation programmes instigated by the region’s co-operatives led to an uprooting of old vineyards in order to plant highly productive clones of red grape varieties. Only in villages in which there had been no land consolidation, such as La Aguilera in Burgos, were the old vineyards – and traditional co-ferment winemaking – maintained.
Jorge Monzón and Isabel Rodero of Dominio del Águila
It is in La Aguilera that Jorge Monzón and Isabel Rodero of Dominio del Águila are championing a revival of the clarete style – their Picaro del Aguila Clarete being one of the finest examples currently available. It says something about the extent to which this winemaking tradition has lapsed that Jorge and Isabel had to surmount considerable legal obstacles before the DO was willing to use the term ”clarete” on their labels. But for them the struggle was necessary in order to protect a part of the region’s heritage.
“It was important to recover the local terminology to defend this style of wine,” Isabel explains. “After a long process in which we had to demonstrate the legality of the use of that term, the regulatory council finally accepted its inclusion on the labels. In this way Picaro del Aguila Clarete was the first wine with DO to be called clarete, not rosado.”
Portuguese styles
This fight for recognition of the uniqueness and historical significance of clarete extends beyond Spain’s borders to Portugal. Here, such co-ferment wines are generally referred to as palhetes (slightly confusingly, ”clarete” is a term that is used for light reds made only with red grapes that have low pigmentation).
Vasco Croft of Aphros Winery in Vinho Verde is a winemaker who, like Jorge and Isabel, is attempting to recover what is a lapsed, yet deep-rooted tradition. Croft first became aware of palhete after discovering Vinho Medieval de Ourém – a red/white co-ferment made in the same way since medieval times. He later encountered references to the same style, made in old amphorae by peasants deep in Alentejo. Locally, it was called ”petroleiro’. Vasco now makes his own palhete, Phaunus, using local white Loureiro and red Vinhão, aged in amphora.
Similarly, in the Algarve, since 2016, Morgado do Quintão in Lagoa has been championing historic local grape varieties like Negra Mole and Crato Branco in clarete and palhete styles. Owner Filipe de Vasconcellos regards clarete/palhete not just as an historical curiosity, but as a wine that represents the future of winemaking in the region – what he refers to as “the real Algarve”. For Filipe, the appeal of these wines has been most apparent in mature export markets, such as France, and among younger wine drinkers with an interest in both provenance and lighter styles.
“The younger audience seems to be very interested in wines that are lighter in style,” he says, “but lightness shouldn’t undermine complexity and I’m hoping that we come across as a project that doesn’t lighten up the wine, but that is going for what they grape actually produces.
“We like that idea of vinifying the grapes and turning them into wine that represents those grapes. The joy for us is in simplifying the process and the attitudes towards it,” he adds. “I think clarete/palhete is a good expression of that – of the grapes as they are versus lots of winemaking technique.”
Vasco Croft of Aphros Winery
Not (yet) of commercial relevance
Production of clarete is still vanishingly small, but there are reasons for believing that it will become more prevalent – not least among them, changing attitudes towards farming. Beyond the traditional ”clarete belt” of northern Spain, clarete/co-ferments are emerging as a consequence of moves by young wine towards recovering what has been lost: rejecting monoculture farming and industrial methods and returning to the pre-industrial wisdom of old mixed-planted vineyards that once made co-fermented whites and reds such a natural option.
In addition to farming priorities, there is also the growing consumer preference for lighter styles of wine. In broad terms, we see a long-term trend away from dense, doorstop reds to lighter more digestible wines, be they glou-glou/chillable reds, rosés, skin-contact whites or wines of many another intermediate styles and hues. There is also a growing discernment among wine drinkers – a recognition that wine does not have to conform to Pantone colour chart to be good.
Leading UK natural wine importer Les Caves de Pyrene has over the years ushered in a wide range of co-ferment wines from across the world, from Argentina to California to France to Austria. In the context of natural wine, colour often ceases to matter altogether. Veteran sales and marketing Doug Wregg recalls Eddie Tscheppe of the Austrian winery Gut Oggau pulling a sample out of a barrel and saying that “we are colour blind here”. In other words, if you close your eyes, then you taste the real character, not the colour, of the wine.
“Co-plantation and co-fermentation of red and white grapes is an ancient tradition…,” he says, ”[but] the emphasis was on heavy reds for such a long time that white grapes were grubbed up. But it is these old vines that give acidity, tension and minerality to the reds and tend to help dialling down the alcohol.
“It seems sensible, from a terroir point of view, to keep grapes from the same vineyard, harvested on the same day, together. And the style too – often old-style glouglou where you don’t need to rely on winemaking technique – helps to make the wines less extractive. Given that a lot of rosés are bland, twice-filtered, highly-sulphured examples of lolly water, claretes are wines with greater character and dare one say with greater gastronomic interest.”
Clarete can be now be labelled as such in Ribera del Duero
The main challenge for clarete’s renaissance is in defining the style for the consumer. Given the lack of regulation, this may be less than straightforward: while in some regions clarete is enshrined in appellation regulations (in Rioja DOCa, for example, clarete must have a minimum of 25 percent red grapes), in others it is not even recognised as an “official” style.
Victory on the label
Things are changing in clarete’s favour, however. In Ribera del Duero, Jorge Monzón registered a significant victory by convincing the DO that clarete was a legitimate, and historic, style and that claretes made within the DO should be labelled as such (he referred them to EU legislation which acknowledges this style). The DO has since made steps towards encouraging farmers to plant white varieties, since 2019 permitting albillo real for use in wines of the appellation. There are also those who support the idea of introducing all white varieties from Castilla y León into the appellation (though the DO says this is not something that is being contemplated in the short term).
Similarly, in the Canary Islands, in the Oratava Valley of northern Tenerife, makes a “Suertes Nat Cool” clarete. Although up until now he has been unable to label it as such, he says that, as part of its next regulatory update, the Valle de La Orotava DO intends to make clarete permissible as an appellation wine.
Jonatan García of Suertes del Marqués
Until such formal steps towards definition are taken, clarete will have to rely on influential champions – buyers, sommeliers – who recognise its unique potential. Ariana Rolich, owner of AR Wines in New York, and former Spanish wine retail buyer for Chamber Street Wines, is one of them. Having spent a lot of time in Catalunya, Rolich was inspired by co-ferment/clarete wines like Venus La Universal’s Dido La Solucio Rosa (made by Sara Pérez and René Barbier). She regards Ribera del Duero as “the gold standard for clarete”, and in 2018 even began making her own clarete, Flash, in the cellar of Bernaví in Terra Alta.
“The moment there is a clarete section that appears on a wine list in Brooklyn the trend will arrive,” Rolich says. “I had a whole clarete shelf when I was a retail buyer, but trends don’t start in retail. They can be useful for the customer to know what to buy next, but you need a cool, busy wine list made by someone with great taste, picking the best examples of the category.
“I know that co-ferments are reasonably trendy along with the lighter chilled red, which came before the orange wine trend, but I think clarete is something slightly different and I think it’s good if we start having that conversation and if people start putting concrete descriptions to the way they define it.”
