ViaVi - Wine Tasting Around Palma de Mallorca

Over 1,395 hectares of land throughout the Balearics are devoted to vineyards. Many of the vineyards on Majorca are open to the public for wine tours & tasting, and you can arrange trips with the vineyards directly. But a much easier way to try a host of Mallorcan wines is to take yourself on the ViaVi wine routes that take place every month in Palma de Mallorca.

The ViaVi is organised by La Vinoteca, and takes place on the second Thursday of every month around Santa Catalina, and on the last Thursday of every month in La Llonja, from 8pm to 11pm. The idea is to follow a route around each area, where participating bars & restaurants offer a glass of wine for the princely sum of €1.50. Each establishment promotes one wine from the vineyards of (mainly) Mallorca, giving you the opportunity to try over 20 different wines each month. Special little tapas dishes are also available to try along with the wine, also priced at €1.50.

The Frenchman and I stumbled upon the ViaVi the other week when we were looking for a place to have some dinner in La Llonja. We were immediately distracted by the thought of tasting a host of different wines at only €1.50 a pop. The participating establishments have posters on their doors, advertising the ViaVi, and you can pick up a ViaVi map at any of these bars. We started in one of our favourites - Forn de Sant Joan (c/Sant Joan) who were offering a red wine called 12 Volts (by 4 Kilo , Felanitx), made from merlot, cabernet sauvignon, syrah & callet. A generous measure was poured and we slurped it down happily, accompanied by the special price tapas dish that was also available. As the wine disappeared, we decided to knock dinner on the head, and continue our exploration of Mallorcan wine - the price point was just too attractive and the Spanish way of hopping from one bar to another appealed to us.

And so we continued on. None of the bars on the La Llonja trail are far from each other, so it's literally a handful of steps before you find yourself at the next place. Tasu (c/ Sant Joan) was next for us, with a dry, dusty offering from Alaro - the ‘Stairway to Heaven' Castell Miquel cabernet sauvignon, not dissimilar to a wine from Bordeaux. Almazara (c/ Vallseca) with its light, perfumed mantonegro wine from Sencelles hit the spot for me, but was too light for the Frenchman. We nipped into La Paloma (c/Apuntadors) and headed upstairs to a room dedicated to wine tasting and pinxos (little open sandwiches). We were served a powerful red wine called Obac C-2006 (Biniali) which, to our completely untrained palette, had a distinctive blackcurrant and northern African spice taste to it - ‘like drinking Tagine' observed the Frenchman. Such a connoisseur.

The next place we visited was Wineing (c/Apuntadors). This is one of the few dedicated wine bars in Palma and they have a great selection of wine from Majorca & Spain that you can try by the glass. With a choice of pinxos on the bar to accompany the wine, it's a good spot to learn about Spanish wine. Tonight, they were offering P de Maria 2007, from Santa Maria del Cami for the ViaVi. It had a rather fusty smell - ‘smells like old camembert that's been left out under the stars for a bit too long' said the ever reliable Frenchman. It turned out to be quite a complicated wine, with ‘notes' of liquorice, molasses & caramel, with some of that north African spice coming through. You can tell we were getting a bit above our station at this point of the evening.

We hurried on to Puro (c/ Montenegro) and gratefully took a seat at the bar. Feeling like we ought to eat something, we tucked into some marinated salmon tapas (yep, €1.50) and took a glass of Oliver Moragues 2009 (Algaida). Smooth with a bit of spice, it had a lovely orange zest aroma to it. We were tempted to stay for another, as we like the groovy tunes that this place plays, but in the interest of research, we literally stumbled on. We were tempted by Montenegro 10, just a few doors down from Puro, but it was so packed we thought we would keep going to Rialto Living. Now, this is not strictly a bar, it's a home & interiors shop that contains a rather stylish cafe. Trying not to bump into the display units, we plonked ourselves at the bar and took some tapas and wine. Rialto was serving the only organic wine that was available on this month's ViaVi - Pedra de Binissalem Ecologic 2009. Made from montenegro and cabernet sauvignon, the aroma reminded me of sherry.

As time was ticking, we moved on to our final stop of the evening - La Vinya de Sant Feliu (c/ San Felio). This is another dedicated wine bar, with an easy-going and welcoming owner serving behind the bar. We waved our ViaVi leaflet vaguely at him and were rewarded with two glasses of Moli de Vent 2009 from Porreres. We also dived into some really excellent tapas in an effort to sop up some of the alcohol that we'd consumed. All our descriptions at this point were rather nonsensical (‘smells of ale' and ‘it's quite tingley') but we do remember that we enjoyed it so much we had another. And then another... With The Rolling Stones playing in the background, and a friendly crowd in the bar, we felt that we had ended up in the best place on this particular wine trail. We vowed we'd be back.

The ViaVi has been running all year and continues until November 2010. We very much hope that it will carry on in 2011 - it's a fun and relatively cheap way to try a whole load of local wine, and to try some bars that you might not otherwise have found. We found all the participating bars to be very friendly and generous with their pours, and the tapas, whilst small, do complement the process and were a life-saver for my head the following morning. All the wine we tried were red wines, perhaps reflecting the more autumnal season that we are currently in, and all were really very good. ViaVi dates for the remainder of 2010:

Thursday 11 November (Santa Catalina)

Thursday 25 November (La Llonja)

You may also want to read more about Mallorcan Wine, or watch our Video on Mallorcan Wine