Gran Cerdo: An Underdog Story

Being British, or mostly British (but that’s another story), I love a good underdog story. I love it when the little guy gets one over big, faceless corporations against all the odds. So I was really pleased when I was given a bottle of wine as a gift that encapsulated this very spirit.

The wine was a 2011 Gran Cerdo from Spain, a Tempranillo/Garnacha blend.

On first impressions I thought that this was just a regular bottle of wine, but when I read the label I realised that this was something special. I hope they don’t mind, but I’d like to replicate what it says on the label as it says, better than I ever could, what they were trying to achieve:

Pig, n.

1. Domesticated mammal with fat body, short legs, big head, plunt and almosy cylindrical snout, floppy ears, and coll-shaped tail, that is raised for meat. Swine.

-adj.

2. A person who does not care about personal grooming or a person that is repulsive for their lack of cleanliness. He’s a pig, always burping while eating. Unpleasant.

3. A person with lack of manners or moral principles.

Gran Cerdo is a great wine dedicated to the bank executives that denied loans to us on the basis that wine is not a seizeable asset. One day, these greasy and sweaty corporate suits will find that the best things in life cannot be impounded, Thanks to our friends [sic.] help, we were finally able to bottle this wine. Now you can enjoy it with pasta or ham.

Have you ever read a better wine label than that? What feeling, what passion, what anguish, what simmering resentment we can feel pulsing through those words. Wow. In an age where so much of the wine related world is dominated by huge corporations and luxury brands such as LVMH it is easy to forget what the very essence of wine is; a winemaker, passionate about what they do, utilising the assets at their disposal to make a product that delights consumers.

What did I make of the wine then? It was a dark, inky purple, deep and intense. On the nose it had a dominant smell of cherries and red berries; it also had a slightly sweet, vanilla-like aroma. On tasting I found it a little underwhelming, it had decent body to it with a smooth tannin profile. It seemed to have a slightly sour after taste, which came from the fact that this is a natural wine stored in an underground cement tank. A decent wine, but brought alive by its story and the evident passion of its winemaker. 7/10.

You can buy the 2012 bottle of Gran Cerdo from Roberson for £9.95 or from Market Row Wines for £8.99. This wine won’t blow you away, but it is very reasonably priced and it goes towards helping the little guy – what more can you ask for?