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I finally had a chance to try one of the more exotic-sounding grapes last night, thanks to a pintxos (Basque tapas) festival being held at José Andrés’ Jaleo restaurant over the past couple of weeks. What’s really great is that we will actually be in Bilbao and San Sebastian next month, so we’ll be able to compare what they had to the real thing!

The deal was that Jaleo had a special lineup of pintxos (”PEEN-choze”) available at the bar during happy hour, with plates of the different single-bite items under glass. You ask the bartender for a plate, which he populates and hands to you, and you go back as many times as you want, $1 per item. Most of the items were one or another combination of tomatoes, eggs, anchovies, fish and peppers, usually on small toasts or flatbread. They also had special 2-oz. pours of txakoli, the classic Basque white wine. Txakoli is typically made of the Hondurrabi Zuri grape, which is indigenous to the Basque region of Spain. I don’t know much Euskara, but at least I now know that “zuri” means “white”. (There’s also a new white pedestrian bridge in Bilbao named “Zubizuri”.) There are other native Basque grapes too, but this is the one I’ve heard about, because it’s on the you-know-who list. And the name just sounds cool.

The wine went great with the pintxos - it’s a basic white, a little citrus flavor, and decent acid, just right for the light bites we were eating, which would have been dry (and, honestly, a little bland) without it. I can’t wait to try this and maybe some other Basque wines during our upcoming trip.