What reigns in Spain: Heart-warming Spanish values for the dead of winter
By David Lawrason
One of the great revelations on a recent trip to lesser-known wine regions of Spain was the value of the wines I encountered. At every price point, I found shockingly good wines selling for much less than wines of equivalent quality from France or California. Being known as a “value wine region” can be a double-edged sword, attracting the budget-conscious consumer but often, at the same time, pigeonholing a region as cheap or somehow incapable of producing top-quality wines. Spain continues to walk that thin edge, with many of its wines currently at the LCBO selling for $10 or less. That said, in my view, Spain has recently become much more focused on making fine wine.
Illustration by Alan King.
Most of Spain’s quality red wine comes from the north, with Rioja being the best-known and largest region. As Bordeaux is to France, Rioja is to Spain — both having huge market presence and a deeply rooted tradition of aging wines a long time in barrel and bottle. But modern tastes have moved to fruitier, earlier-drinking wines, and while Rioja has embraced this trend to some extent, lesser-known regions such as Navarra, Ribera del Duero, Toro, Bierzo, Penedès, Priorat, Montsant, and Cariñena have moved faster.
Of those, Ribera del Duero (on the banks of the Duero River, which flows west into Portugal, where it becomes the Douro) is the best established, with some big-name houses, such as Vega Sicilia, Alion, Pesquera, and Aalto, commanding luxury prices. But elsewhere, countless small, new wineries are blooming on the arid steppes, many of them boasting young but well-travelled winemakers at the helm. In each of three small appellations I visited last fall — Rueda, Toro, and Bierzo — the number of wineries has grown from about a dozen to over 50 in the past decade. These new wineries are focused on the export market and are making very good wines styled for international tastes.
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