Please note that I have generally mentioned the best producers or wines in each region, but have put the best buys in bold.
It is difficult to think of another country whose wines have changed as radically in the last five years as Spain. Thailand perhaps, because it does actually produce some quite drinkable wine nowadays whereas five years ago… But Spain’s wine revolution has been on an entirely different scale. For a start, very unlike Thailand, it is one of the world’s three biggest wine producers and is now, thanks largely to the introduction of irrigation, making far more wine: almost 30% more today than in the early 1990s.
Average yields are still much lower than in France and Italy however – 30 hl/ha as opposed to 60 – and the really significant changes in Spanish wine are qualitative rather than quantitative. It was not that long ago that good quality Spanish wine meant Rioja. Then Rioja and Ribera del Duero. Then Priorat had to be added to the pot, plus Albariño from Galicia for white wine drinkers perhaps. But today, exciting table wines are also being made in all of the following regions: Alella, Alicante, Bierzo, Calatayud, Campo de Borja, Carineña, Cigales, Conca de Barberà, Costers del Segre, Empordà-Costa Brava, Getariaiko Txakolina, Jumilla, Málaga, Manchuela, Montsant, Navarra, Penedès, Rías Baixas, Ribeira Sacra, Ribeiro, Rueda, Somontano, Terra Alta, Toro, Utiel-Requena, Valdeorras, Valdepeñas and Yecla, not to mention the fine whites now being made on the Canary Islands and the bold reds of Mallorca.
This list reflects the wines that happen to have impinged on the palate and consciousness of someone resident in London. Unless Spanish wine’s rate of progress has suddenly dropped like a stone, there are doubtless bodegas in many other, possibly as yet undenominated, zones harbouring ferments that will set our hearts racing in the next year or two.
Few of the world’s wine enthusiasts associate Spain with really nerve-tingling, refreshing dry white wines but now the Rueda region on the Douro/Duero river in north west Spain can be added to Galicia as a reliable source of such marvels. The local Verdejo grape is responsible for the most exciting and distinctive examples, although Sauvignon Blanc is often blended with it. Sanz and Belondrade are famously high achievers here but 2004 seems to have delivered excellent examples in both Ermita Veracruz Verdejo 2004 Rueda (£6.99 Majestic), Aura Verdejo 2004 Rueda (£6.99 Halifax Wines, Edencroft of Nantwich, T Wright of Horwich) and Palacio de Bornos Verdejo 2004 Rueda (£5.99 Waitrose). The first wine probably has the most fruit concentration – like greengages with an electric shock – but both should appeal to those looking for an alternative to Sancerre or Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc.
Probably the hottest new, the term being used advisedly, red wine region is Toro just downriver of Rueda where investment has been pouring in and the number of producers has quadrupled over the last seven years. Maurodos, Numanthia Termes, Pintia and Telmo Rodriguez with his Pago La Jara have already established themselves at the top of this very young tree but there are some much more keenly priced bottlings that provide a good introduction to the dramatically sweet, overtly fruity wines made from Tinta de Toro, the local strain of Tempranillo. Muruve Roble 2003 Toro from Frutos Villar is a good, representative example that is reduced by Sainsbury’s as part of their Drinks Festival from £5.99 to an almost absurd £3.99 per oak aged bottle.
Newer but potentially even more thrilling than Toro is Bierzo whose grape speciality Mencía, from old vines grown on high-altitude slate, has the most delightful elegance. Producers as conscientious as Alvaro Palacios of Priorat with his Corullón bottling and the inspiring Dominio de Tares (www.dominiodetares.com and widely available in the US) seem to have got the hang of both region and grape remarkably quickly, but with prices to match for their top wines. Perhaps better value is the refreshingly lively Tilenus Crianza 2001 Bierzo from Estefanía, also from very old Mencía vines, which can be found for only about £12.50 a bottle from www.todovino.co.uk. Novum Wines of London SW11 can offer more recent vintages. The juicy, mulberry-scented Pittacum 2001 Bierzo is an even better buy at 10 euros from Mondovino in Belgium (Caves de Pyrene sell the 2002 from this tiny bodega owned by Terras Gauda of Baixas for £8.25.). See A beginner’s guide to Toro and Toro – who makes the best wine for more about this region.
But there are good wines, and often great bargains, to be found in all sorts of much less fashionable (so far) corners of Spain. Jose Peñín, author of Spain’s most important annual wine guide the Guía Peñín, was in London recently to show ten of his favourite Spanish wines and one of them was wildly underpriced. Garnacha Viñas Viejas 2002 Baltasar Gracián (£6.99 Adnams of Southwold) comes from the obscure Calatayud region and eloquently represents both the old Garnacha (Grenache) vines and the co-operatives that characterise it. This fine offering from the San Alejandro co-op 30 miles south of Zaragoza is sweet, gentle, soft, flattering yet savoury with a neat, dry finish. It should drink well any time in the next four or five years and is given away at this price.
Another old-vine Garnacha co-operative project, funded by Borsao in Campo de Borja to the immediate north of Calatayud, is open to no such charge. The first dramatic, cocoa-sweet releases, Alto Moncayo 2002 and Aquilon 2002, have been made by Australian Chris Ringland of Three Rivers fame, with a little help from his favourite South Australian cooper, and are being offered via importer Jorge Ordoñez at around $30 and $130 respectively a bottle in the US.
Spanish wine producers have, curiously, had a hate-hate relationship with Garnacha – generally preferring the deeper-coloured Tempranillo which is twice as widely planted, which for a while made Spain’s old stumps of Garnacha a somewhat undervalued resource. It is encouraging therefore to see the G word appearing with more and more pride on Spanish wine labels. Another example of great-value Garnacha is Lelia Garnacha 2003 Carineña (£4.99 The Winery of London W9 and at Liberty, W1 and just $5.99 from PJ Wine in New York). This was a previous wine of the week on this site. The region around Carineña gives its name to the Carignan grape variety but this wine is a glorious expression of the richly fruity character of Garnacha, typically finished with some slightly dusty tannins when grown in such dry conditions as most of Spain’s wine regions experience.
Although Spain’s new army of wine devotees concentrate on the country’s finest bottles, with resulting inflation of prices for high end Rioja, Ribera del Duero and Priorat, the country’s distinguishing mark is its ability to export some seriously interesting cheap reds. One obvious example is Tempranillo La Serrana 2003 Vino de la Tierra Castilla y León (£2.99 Majestic). This wine is made by the co-op in Cigales, another once-obscure Spanish wine region now enjoying a renaissance thanks to the efforts of, for example, the women who make Traslanzas serious Tempranillo. La Serrana is not a serious wine but is beautifully soft and fruity for the price.
This is of course the most superficial hop around some of the better buys from the north west quarter of the most exciting winescape in Europe, whose strong wines from Andalusia – sherry, Montilla and Málaga – are even more distinctive and underpriced than anything mentioned above.