Before Marco and Cameron reached the end of their II Sammic Scholarship BasqueStage at Martín Berasategui, we hopped out for one last excursion, and an exciting one at that. We took the short ride to the txakoli bodega named after the famed Basque chef, Karlos Arguiñano.

Txakoli almost died out in the last century due to industrialization in the Basque Country and a grape sickness.  The granting of Denominación de Origen in the 1990′s, however, promoted a resurgence.  Now it is made in the Gipuzkoa province as well as Araba and Vizkaya. It is made with two grape varietals: Hondarribi Zuria and Hondarribi Beltza.

Chef Arguiñano’s fame and renown has enabled him, with a few partners, to open a bodega of txakoli and do things, as Frank Sinatra said, his way. What does that mean? That he can insist on using only local grapes for his Basque white wine. That he can take his time, not needing to rush bottles to market for any particular reason. That he can perform a bit of an experiment, in other words.

So, the amiable crew of the bodega showed us around the entire bodega. The vines are rather young, only about five years old, and the first vintage is 2010. An interesting point of the K5 txakoli is that its makers expect it to be quite different from its competitors. Normally txakoli is drunk within a year, but the vintners at K5 expect it to remain tasty, perhaps even get better, over the course of three to four.

There are many such things that differentiate this bodega: the process of destemming all the grapes, not common in txakoli makers. Using the majority of the pressed liquid for txakoli vinegar, instead of marketing inferior quality txakoli. Waiting until the ideal harvest time, instead of harvesting early and adding sugar.

We tried the txakoli, and it was delicious. Marco and Cameron found it different than many of the more “rustic” txakolis they’ve tried, a wine that perhaps is more at home in restaurants than in the dirtier bars of the old town.  This is an experiment that could very well change the future of this traditional “table” wine of Basque Country…keep your eyes on it.