The Devil's Crayon — Txakolí, Creativity, and Subversion in Basque Country, Spain
In the outskirts of the Basque village of Balmaseda, in Bizkaia, northern Spain, there’s a large concrete apartment block. Underneath it, a dusty garage. Alfredo Egia unlocks the padlock, slides open the iron gate, and beckons us to follow him inside. I am hesitant. The contrast from the bright midday sun and the dark dank garage blinds me. It all feels quite mysterious, like stepping into Narnia, just a bit grimier.
Between the thick supporting columns of the building, we make our way to the far end, walking past a half dozen covered sports cars (belonging to his brother-in-law), a doughnut truck used at streets fairs (his girlfriend’s), one of those DIY kit cars (his), and then finally a barrel, some stainless tanks, a couple of 1000 litre plastic tanks full of white wine, known in these parts as Txakolí, and a stack of unassembled cardboard boxes and labels.
Alfredo seems amused at the appearance of the warehouse.“It’s like something out of Reservoir Dogs,” he says, feigning shooting a gun in the air. Indeed, had I entered alone, without James the photographer, I would’ve been concerned for my safety.
Photography by James Sturcke
He is the man behind Alfredo Egia Wine, which lives up to the term ‘garage winery’ in every way. He brought us here to taste the 2022 and 2023 vintages of his wines Rebel Rebel and Izaki, as well as something… a “bit different,” he says. Inserting a wine thief into the lone barrel, he extracts a deep yellow liquid and pours it into our glasses. A faint smell of volatile acidity blows off quickly, giving way to richer aromas of citrus fruit and baked apple.
Swirl, whiff, swirl, then the moment of truth. To my surprise, it’s pleasantly sweet, lively, delicious, reminding me of moelleux wines found north of the border in the French Basque country. Hardly a coincidence—Alfredo’s mentor and occasional partner in crime is Imanol Garay, a winemaker based in Southwest France, and well known in natural wine circles.
Alfredo explains that wines don’t always follow a winemaker’s plans. This particular barrel, for example, went astray, refusing to ferment to completion—hence the remaining residual sugar. With its slightly sweet and oxidative profile, it goes in stark contrast to traditional Txakolís, if there is such a thing. A one-time limited edition, he plans on calling it Make it Look Like an Accident. “Like a line in one of those gangster films,” he says with a grin.
What’s not an accident, though, is the Regulatory Council of the Denomination of Origin (DO) Bizkaiko Txakolina’s decision not to approve any of his wines as apt, barring him from officially using the terms Txakolí or Txakolina (both are interchangeable), or referencing the geographic location on his labels. In essence, he was ousted from the DO unless his wines fit their quality standards. If it had ever caused distress, it’s dirt off his shoulder today.
“Txakolí is characterised as being a simple, technological wine. I realised that I don’t want to be in [the DO], to be known by that label, if that’s all people recognise.”
***
Alfredo isn’t the first winemaker that doesn’t belong to a DO, either by choice or circumstances. Many claim that the DO, with the humble intention of preserving and protecting traditional elements within geographic boundaries (say native varieties, winemaking methods or a particular taste or profile), stifles creativity, limits the imagination and punishes experimentation.
““Txakolí is characterised as being a simple, technological wine. I realised that I don’t want to be in [the DO]...if that’s all people recognise.” ”
Txakolí, for example, was just a Basque word used to describe a wine that was made and consumed at home, often white due to the grapes grown in the region but also some red. In the neighbouring province of Gipuzkoa, it was characterized as having natural fizz while in Bizkaia, they were predominantly still.
While written records mention “chacolín” wines as early as the 1500s, it was only in the late 1980s, when high-tech hit the Spanish wine industry, that Txakolí, known by its Basque name, became a thing, officially. As mom-and-pop wineries, known as caserios, began to shut down, industrial wineries came in and flooded the market with today’s concept of Txakolí: a basic (white) wine with a lot of primary fruit and often, with a pinch of acidity and dash of carbon dioxide added to give it the crackle and pop that drinkers expect.
I’ve always found it rather ridiculous of the DO’s tasting panel to have such a narrow notion of taste. Having gone through traditional wine education systems, including the global, yet London-based WSET Diploma and European universities, this limited view makes sense. While the knowledge gained at these institutions is invaluable, they also impose a certain way of learning and tasting.
And tastes, as the Italian anthropologist Massimo Montanari has written, aren’t accidental. They are forged from different systems, like school, but also by race, gender, class, culture and income, and are rooted in historical realities. It’s no wonder then, that one man’s palate (say, Robert Parker, the infamous American wine writer-cum-critic that shook up the industry in the 1980s with his rating system) can change tastes and alter winemaking on a global scale.
This speaks to a larger issue—that of information and access to it. Wine knowledge was once only accessible to professionals, and perhaps those in wine clubs at posh universities, but the internet changed everything. With wine’s reputation as being “complicated” and the industry as being snobby, a whole swath of educators, communicators and wine influencers have appeared.
In an effort to make wine less intimidating and more approachable, they’ve taken it upon themselves to “demystify” wine to lay people.It all starts with good intentions, but its relevance has become increasingly blurred with the rise of influencer marketing—not just because of sponsored content, endorsements, or paid trips, but due to a glut of repetitive, often identical information.
Wine associations, like the DOs, have also hopped on board, coming out with their own masterclasses and certificates, monetising local knowledge. Paid partnerships have been struck, educational wine trips made and bootcamps designed. But given this noisy landscape, how much information is too much? In today’s economy where everyone’s an expert, what happened to our sense of wonder?
***
On the steepest of slopes of the lush mountains outside the town of Aia, in Gipuzkoa, Aitor Irazu, winemaker and co-founder of Makatzak Wild Wines, can be found tending to his vines
Following the GPS coordinates he sent me, I drive through little villages and towns, past bushy sheep that baa-baa-baa along winding roads, and hefty cows grazing elegantly, on the edges of cliffs. I take a left on an unnamed, half-paved street, which then turns into a dirt road that goes up, and up, and up. A ditch here, a pothole there, I try to drive carefully so as to not tip over on the many twists and turns. Finally, I park the car at the red dot, but there’s more territory to cover.
Like an ill-prepared tourist at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro, in a skirt and Chuck Taylors, the steep, rocky walk to the vineyards leaves me huffing and puffing. But once we reach the top, the smell of earth, vegetation, wild herbs, and country air feels electric. Up here, twisted and tangled vines wrap around six-foot-tall pergolas, their arms stretched out long and wide. Here, everything is wild, and savage, and serene.
Aitor, tanned and tired from a full day of pruning, knows a hard day's work. The Sargintxulo vineyard, where we’re standing, was abandoned when he and his cousin and co-founder, Jon Estebanez, bought this plot in 2019. The painstaking effort not only to revive the land, but also to convert to organic and biodynamic farming, meant that he spent two years working on the vines before they could grow grapes to make their own Txakolís.
“ “In today’s economy where everyone’s an expert, what happened to our sense of wonder?””
Despite the “monolithic” Txakolí wines of today, as Aitor says—or perhaps because of them—they recognised the potential of the region and the quality of local grape varieties, but it wasn’t until Aitor tasted a wine from French producer Marcel Lapierre that he had his big aha moment.
“It just had a different energy,” he says. “I didn’t know wines could be like that and I began thinking, I want to do something like this.”
He went down the natural winemaking route. But rather than follow the dogma, Aitor trusted intuition, feelings and observation, letting the wines guide him instead.
I first tasted Makatzak Wild Wines last year, when I visited Aitor at their winery, resulting in my own a-ha moment. Wines so full of life and magic and sparkle, it was as if Aitor had poured all his insides, all his stories into them. Having accepted my last minute request, I tagged along on a visit he had already planned with a Parisien sommelier.
As Aitor started talking about the project, in French, in English, peppered with Spanish and of course, words in Basque, I tried taking notes, attempting to retain some information, anything. But everything felt bewildering, from the names of the towns to the grape varieties to the wines. I was effectively lost in translation. But that confusion made me feel like a beginner again—it was freeing. I had no expectations, no preconceived notions, not a clue.
The truth is, for a long time I believed that to be taken seriously in wine, I had to know The Hard Truths. It started out as a curiosity, a fascination and yes, even a source of intimidation. Ironically, as I worked my way through many a wine course, gaining certificates and degrees, it was like the more I knew about wine the less I felt for it.
Finally, after finishing the prestigious (and expensive) WSET Diploma, I came to a stark realisation: I had effectively sucked the mystery out of wine.
Looking out at the Sargintxulo vineyard, coincidentally meaning witch's cave in Basque and forming part of local mythology, I’ve come to understand that there’s beauty in the complex, the confusing and the unknown; it’s what attracted me to wine.
We’ll never know everything there is to know in wine, and we don’t need to. In an industry so preoccupied with facts and figures, with knowing everything and taking things apart, with dissecting wines until they’re unrecognizable, there’s a lot to be said for play, for aha moments, for being kinda lost. It’s only through a childlike sense of wonder that we can make our way back to Narnia.
