ESFF's Wine Tasting Event 2024

EESFF in collaboration with the Cervantes Chair is proud to celebrate Spanish culture and language through screenings, events, guest visits, and workshops. This year’s wine-tasting event is an opportunity to learn about the historic Bodegas Alvear. Join us to celebrate a passion for wine that stretches back through generations of one family—all the way to 1729!

We will start the tasting with two still wines, which are part of Alvear’s Tres Miradas project, which focuses on the effect of soil and micro-climate on wine, followed by a generous Amontillado, and after that, a Cream, which has always been very popular in the UK. We will finish with one of their sweet wines, Px Solera 1927, which comes with great scores from the most prestigious wine experts.

The wines, in order:

• Tres Miradas Vino de Pueblo 2021
• Tres Miradas Paraje de Río Frío Alto 3er año 2019
• Alvear Amontillado
• Alvear Cream
• Px Solera 1927

This event will be followed by a selection of tapas by the most wonderful tapas bars in the city.

The history of Alvear (the fourth oldest registered company in Spain, the second oldest winery in the country, and the oldest in Andalusia) continues to be written by the hand of its eighth generation. This ensures that the unrivalled wine heritage of centuries-old soleras casks is maintained whilst they look to the future and rediscover the immense potential and charm of Pedro Ximénez grape variety wines made in the Montilla area.

Luis Giménez Alvear is the General Manager of this winery and represents the eighth generation. Almost 300 years have passed, and they still believe in and gamble on Montilla wines. They have never ceased making them in old soleras casks, true jewels of Spanish winemaking, maintaining the heritage of wineries that keep liquid treasures in their warehouses’ tranquillity. Some of these treasures are over 200 years old, and some are pre-phylloxera. Although Montilla does not preserve vineyards before the phylloxera plague, wines made before this insect’s invasion have survived, such as our Px 1830.

The winery was founded in 1729 by Don Diego de Alvear y Escalera. His grandson, Don Diego de Alvear y Ponce de León, married Luisa Rebecca Ward Hopwood, and the couple went on to have seven children. With the fourth family generation, and thanks to their parents’ contacts in the UK and knowledge of the English language (they were polyglots), the exportation of wines and butts from Montilla to the UK and other European countries began.

Alvear is one of the most prestigious and internationally recognised wineries in Spain. The winery has extensive vineyards (300 hectares) located in the famous areas of the Montilla and Moriles mountains (Córdoba) and purchases grapes and wine from local winegrowers. Here, the main variety is Pedro Ximénez, a grape native to the Rhine with a high sugar content, which is the sole basis for sweet, fino, oloroso, and amontillado wines. The wines obtained from this grape naturally reach an alcohol level between 14% and 16%. For this reason, if they are appropriately made in the Montilla-Moriles Designation of Origin, there is no need to fortify the finos with added alcohol to increase their alcohol content; they are completely natural.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

French Institute of Scotland, West Parliament Square, Edinburgh, United Kingdom