Although the Spanish wine scene can seem a bit crowded, it’s also at a crossroads where some of the old-recipe producers are being left behind as a newer breed of winemakers turn to more authentic, unique offerings, often through much simpler winemaking. The result has been a wave of lighter, more transparent offerings – but by no means simple or diluted – that take it to the next level in terroir transparency, resulting in some of the greatest wines we have seen come out of the country.
After rating more than 2,500 Spanish wines in our Hong Kong office this year and encountering a record-breaking number of top scorers – four 100-pointers plus a slew rated 94-plus points – the takeaway from our tastings couldn’t be clearer: Spain stands atop the world of premium wine with a laser focus on drinkability and gastronomic consonance.
“Forty years ago, everyone in Spain wanted to make Rioja, so everything was tempranillo,” said Robert Santana, the winemaker for Envinate. “Twenty-five years ago, everyone wanted to make … wines with a lot of alcohol and 300 percent new oak, so there was a lot of cabernet and syrah.”
Run by a small group of college friends since 2008, Envinate currently works with 45 hectares of vines across Spain – in Tenerife, Ribeira Sacra, Almansa and Murcia – delivering both cool, tangy Atlantic freshness as well as fresh and spicy Mediterranean energy. Santana, one of the “four musketeers” of Envinate with Alfonso Torrente, Laura Ramos and Jose Martinez, told me in a Zoom interview that they wanted to avoid making “Coca-Cola”-type wines.
ENVINATE’S ROBERT SANTANA ON ‘NEW SPANISH WINE’
“Every year is different and we want to make wines that take you to the place, not recipe wine,” he said, adding that although many call them noninterventionists, he believes they do need to intervene – with sensibility.
Envinate’s wines are made without using commercial yeast and with only very light extraction during fermentation, and a lot of the wines are also made with whole bunches of grapes. Minimal sulfur is added before bottling. This helps the four winemakers find the personality of the wine from the soil and the character from the vintage, Santana said. The soul of the wine, he said, comes from the caretakers of the land making decisions according to their understanding of the place.
Envinate’s wines can be beguilingly light and unassuming, but their offerings from Tenerife, on the Canary Islands, are especially noteworthy. If we had to pick a few highlights, then the Envínate Vinos Atlánticos Migan 2020 is a good place to start. It is mainly listan negro from prephylloxera vines of 100 to 200 years old with a lifted white pepper note that adds a tangy feel to the wild red berries with an engagingly reductive and ethereal sensibility – something otherworldly, mesmerizing and mind-opening. The white counterpart, the Envínate Vinos Atlánticos Palo Blanco 2020 is equally epiphanic. Flinty, electric and full of flavors and tension, it is Tenerife’s answer to great Burgundy white but with listan blanco, otherwise known as palomino.
Envinate’s Ribeira Sacra wines, from the small crop of the 2020 vintage, were dotted with more warmth and richness than usual but remain transparent, fresh and fun to drink. It was a warm and dry year, which advanced the growing cycle and harvest. It was also their second-earliest harvest, according to Torrente, who makes Envinate’s Lousas wines in Ribeira Sacra.
Envinate is just one great example of how young and bold Spanish winemakers are churning out terroir-transparent wines with brightness and drinkability – no easy task in a country that often values tradition and old-school recipe making.
RIOJA RENAISSANCE
“Today, the most exciting, freaky, young guys I’m sure are in Spain. They drink Champagne, they drink Burgundy, they drink Jura … everybody is ‘crazy’ now,” said Telmo Rodriguez, one of the seasoned hands behind Spain’s terroir renaissance, who is betting on an exciting future for Spanish wine and the young, bright minds changing the landscape. Instead of following the rules, they break them and lead the new trend, he says.
Rodriguez himself is the archetype of an avant-garde winemaker who jumps into his pickup truck in the early morning to discover new or forgotten terroirs and dive right into the process of making wines that speak to place.
TELMO RODRIGUEZ FINDS HIS SWEET SPOT
Two of his wines received 100 points this year, and plenty of others came very close to achieving our top rating. One of the perfect-scoring wines was the magical Compañia de Vinos Telmo Rodriguez Rioja Las Beatas 2019, a truly unique and intuitive red that turns its natural flair into scented finesse and layers in the glass. It’s the ultimate terrior-driven wine coming from a small parcel of vines in Rioja.
Despite the attacks of frost in the Rioja village of Labastida, the 2019 vintage of Las Beatas was effortless and intrinsic – pure and linear with a precise, delineated palate and blue flower aromas. Above all, it was so well balanced that a touch more would be redundant and anything less would leave it on the meager side.
Coming from the 1.9-hectare Las Beatas vineyard, a grand cru doppelganger that Rodriguez considers Rioja’s version of a great vineyard in Vosne-Romanée, the flair in the wine is readily apparent. “When we found Las Beatas, we knew we had found an amazing talent,” Rodriguez said of the terroir’s potential to birth striking wines. “In fact, we learned with Las Beatas what could be the most amazing and sophisticated taste of a beautiful Rioja.”
READ MORE: TOP 100 WINES OF SPAIN 2021
Rodriguez, who aims to revive the old tradition of field blends in Rioja and bring life back to the old, forgotten vineyards, took almost 20 years to restore the long-abandoned Las Beatas plot, which sits on a terraced site. The wines that spring from Las Beatas’ terroirs are among Rioja’s finest and most ethereal expressions and show real Burgundian sensibility.
In comparison, Rodriguez’s other 100-pointer is more Bordeaux-like. The Yjar Rioja 2018 is a distinctive expression with a bit more sophistication, showing restrained plushness as a more modern Rioja at its best – demure yet layered and sophisticated, attentive but not flattering. As a field blend that hails from a revived, historical 3.8-hectare vineyard, it is a true neoclassical Rioja. Remarkably, it is only the second vintage of this wine, but indeed an amazing one – and one Rodriguez believes might be a replication of 1964. Yjar is the first Rioja wine sold at La Place de Bordeaux and it still represents good value, with the 2017 vintage retailing at around $120 in the United States.
In comparing Las Beatas and Yjar, Rodriguez said, “When you talk about wines like Las Beatas, it’s like hippy and ingenious, but when you talk about Yjar, it’s aristocratic and sophisticated.”
While there is a loud buzz around 2019 becoming one of the best vintages for Rioja in the last decade, the success of Yjar 2018 is a solid reminder that 2018 can’t quite be written off. It was an Atlantic-type vintage in Rioja, where most reds showed more freshness, finesse and detail, although with a little less depth if you compare it with 2019.
But Rodriguez believes that one can’t generalize a vintage. He reported that his Remelluri vineyards, for example, suffered from frost in 2019, with some affected secondary bunches changing the physiology of some of the wines. As a result, his Granja de Nuestra Señora de Remelluri Rioja Blanco 2019 turned out to be one of the most delicate, linear and mineral Remelluri whites, a vivid contrast to the fresh but rounder 2018 vintage.
Most of the Rioja winemakers we talked to spoke highly of 2019. Agustin Santolaya, the managing director of one of the region’s leading producers, Bodega Roda, believes 2019 may be the best vintage since 2001, with remarkable depth and freshness. His premium, single-vine selection Bodegas Roda Rioja Cirsion 2019 shows promising aging potential with a modern style – deep, complex, fresh and naturally concentrated with ultra-fine tannins.
Meanwhile, the Rioja producer Artadi’s fascinating lineup of single-vineyard and single-plot wines from 2019 are among the greatest references for the vintage and the new classics that talk about place and precise winemaking. They are ripe, dense and concentrated but at the same time harmonious and mineral with broad and powerful yet well-honed tannins padding through the fresh, full-bodied palate. The Viña El Pisón Álava 2019 and Artadi Alava El Carretil 2019 are resounding demonstrations of how the top wines fared in this this vintage, with terroir fully showcased.
The rest of Artadi’s lineup offers great value for money, with the best-value wines being the Artazu Garnacha Navarra Pasos de San Martín 2018 and Artadi Alava Viñas de Gain 2019.
Etienne Cordonnier of the Bordeaux-influenced Rioja winery El Sacramento reported that the early months of 2019 were dry but were followed by a spring with sufficient rain. The hot and dry weather conditions in June then delivered the right amount of ripeness, followed by some storms and cooling winds at the end of August, resulting in a good balance for the final harvest.
“It was a bit stressful, but it was good for the vines,” said Cordonnier, whose 2019 vintage is very consistent in its refined, elegant style and fits in between the slightly more powerful 2017 and the more fluid and drinkable 2018.
2019 also seemed to be a much better proposition for the modern, concentrated Riojas with 100 percent French oak aging, like the Marqués de Murrieta Rioja Dalmau Reserva 2019, and it’s a totally different expression from Murrieta’s emblematic and much more traditional Castillo Ygay Gran Reserva, but one can still see a hidden connection with a drop of zesty quality to the fruit that makes the modern Dalmau more eclectic. It blends 70-year-old cabernet sauvignon (10 percent) to the 80-year-old-plus tempranillo and a splash of graciano.
Graciano – a grape that Marques de Murrieta owner Vicente Dalmau told us during a Zoom interview is becoming more important in Rioja due to climate change, along with mazuelo – is showing very well overall this year with many successful varietal wines. Its tangy pepperiness with the rusty feel to its tart black cherries can be tantalizing if you like spicy wines with good color, concentration and, most important, acidity and mid-palate freshness and fluidity. Many outstanding expressions also show good oak affinity. Try the Bodegas Castillo de Sajazarra Graciano Rioja Digma Reserva 2017, Rioja Vega Graciano Rioja Con Gracia 2017 and Altos de Rioja Graciano Rioja Pigeage 2020.
We see graciano, with its understated profile, gaining ground in Rioja even if some winemakers don’t quite believe in its potential, referring to it as “gracia, no” (akin to “No thank you” in Spanish) because they believe the grape lacks a certain grace and elegance.
WINDS OF CHANGE
There is real excitement in Toro, too, especially when it comes to its cooler, Atlantic vintage of 2018. One of the most impressive reds from this vintage is Tempos Vega Sicilia’s Toro project – the Pintia Toro 2018, which we believe is the finest Pintia we have ever tasted.
As in Rioja, the 2018 vintage in Toro was a rainy one, unusual for Toro but highly precious for a usually hot and dry appellation. That rain stretched the growing season, rendering extra brightness, freshness and layers to Pintia’s typical brooding depth and power. Gonzalo Iturriaga, the technical director for all of Tempos Vega Sicilia’s estates, said he enjoyed 2018 very much, starting from the beginning in the cellar to the final wine, adding that the next vintage of the same type would be 2021.
For such vintages, Iturriaga said, “you could enjoy and not rush to get freshness and fantastic tannins,” along with being able to extract a little more without worrying about the brightness from the fruit.
Another highlight from Toro this year is a rare, 100-point tiny-production wine (only 300 bottles) that comes from 100 to 200-year-old vines – the Numanthia Termanthia Toro IPSE NV, a blend of 2014, 2015 and 2016 that James Suckling described as a young, “crazy” wine full of old-vine character with incredible depth and complexity – bark, mushroom, earth and an array of flowers.
Numanthia is also moving away from its past style of making extremely concentrated and woody wines and is now aiming for transparency and drinkability, which is evident in the new releases of its entry-level wines. Lucas Lowi, the estate director of Numanthia, said one of the key fine-tunings for the winery is earlier picking of the grapes – about two weeks earlier than in the past in most cases. “We understood that we had to advance the harvest to keep better levels of acidity,” he said. “We are focused on this point for parcels. About 15 years ago, we harvested at the end of September or early October. It was really, really ripe.”
For Ribera del Duero, few wines better illustrate the change in styles than Betrand Sourdais’ Dominio de Es wines from the 2020 vintage. These delve into the unique expressions of biodynamically farmed, prephylloxera vineyards, not only showing typical Ribera del Duero structure, but also transparency and tension in a vintage where heavy rain in late September delayed the harvest. The wines are fresh and almost ethereal and pinot-like on the nose, reminiscent of great Burgundy, but the palate is chalky, tense and nicely austere, and pure yet stony, as if tasting a Barolo. This is a truly unique experience from Ribera del Duero!
In Gredos, near Madrid, young producers such as Bodega Marañones are making a difference through fresh, terroir-driven wines with garnacha, showing the true potential the grape has for becoming the pinot noir of Mediterranean countries with its great ability to transmit terroir sensibility and tempting drinkability.
The Bodega Marañones Garnacha Vinos de Madrid Peña Caballera 2019 is such a bewitching expression of a single-parcel red that benefits from its high altitude with a nothern exposure, giving it more freshness, elegance and expressiveness. While light in form, it is not bereft of intensity. Marañones winemaker Fernando Garcia is also a co-founder, along with Daniel Landi, of the Gredos’ champion of drinkability, the Comando G.
READ MORE: OUR TOP 100 WINES OF 2021
Meanwhile, the former cellar master of Bodega Marañones, Alvar de Dios, found similar freshness in the high-altitude vineyards of Arribes del Duero, the new and less well known DO that borders Portugal, to deliver incredibly drinkable and outstanding wines from unique and lighter grapes. The Alvar de Dios Castilla y León Yavallo 2019, a trousseau-based blend with whole bunch, and the doña blanca Alvar de Dios Castilla y León Las Vidres 2019 are great references from Villadepera in this appellation.
The winds of change for fresh, drinkable wines blow even stronger in Atlantic appellations near the ocean, including for Rias Baixas’ albariños, which transport you straight to the sea with their mineral, saline and briny smack.
Most Spanish albariños are fresh, elegant and pair well with so many types of food – part of these terroir-transparent wines’ engaging gastronomic quality. In our tastings this year, we found their average quality to be very high, with many of them scoring 91-plus points, but they remain consumer-friendly even though the price of albariños is rising along with the growing demand, especially in fine-dining restaurants.
“For us, albariño is one of the best white grape varieties in the world, and it’s not just made for early drinking. It has a lifted acidity that needs time to let it settle,” said Maria Vargas, the winemaker for Marqués de Murrieta, whose Pazo Barrantes Rias Baixas La Comtesse 2018 is an outstanding example showing how serious mature albariños can be with their ripeness, density and brightness. More significant is there naturally taut texture with mineral tension, fine lees and a transparent, crystalized grip. Other notable producers, such as Zarate and Attis, also delivered unique, singular and diverse expressions of premium albariños.
THE KING OF GARNACHA-BASED REDS
In Spain’s northeast, the top wines are all streamlined with a spicy, herbal Mediterranean soul and energy. From Priorat, for example, the legendary winemaker Alvaro Palacios gave us a much-deserving 100-pointer, the undeniably cultish (and expensive) Palacios’ Priorat L’Ermita 2020, which lives up to its hype and price.
The 2020 vintage once again proves itself to be the king of garnacha-based reds from Spain despite a challenging, mildew-stricken vintage in the Priorat village of Gratallops. Total rainfall for the vintage reached 674 millimeters, most of which fell in the spring and early summer, and it wasn’t until mid-June that a proper Mediterranean summer finally got under way. The result is a wine with incredible purity, great depth and great finesse, and according to Palacios, it was a bit paradoxical with a unique, opulent texture considering the difficulties with rain and mildew.
If L’Ermita is too pricy and scarce, the much better value would be Palacios’ village wine, the Gratallops 2020. The same is true of the emotion-evoking mencia-based wines made in Bierzo by Palacios and his nephew Ricardo Perez Palacios, of which the village wine Corullon is a standout single-vineyard expression.
And if you’re looking for wines that bring pure Mediterranean energy to the glass, Dominik Huber and Tatjana Peceric, who run the Priorat winery Terroir Al Limit and its Montsant offshoot, Terroir Sense Fronteres, deliver. This is all due to their winemaking, Huber said. “We don’t do extraction. Rather, it’s an infusion winemaking. It means we don’t punch down or pump over,” he said. “We age the wine in cement and today we do not use oak anymore.”
He also pointed out that he wants less “ego” involved in the duo’s wines, going for the unadorned, authentic version of whatever comes out of the vineyard. But this also means there’s little room to hide if there is a mistake, according to Peceric. Her fascinating personal project’s Coreografia Montsant 2021 and luminously light-ruby rosé, the Coreografia Priorat Clarete 2021, are among our top and most drinkable discoveries this year.
For Huber and Tatjana, their personal tastes and the quest for gastronomic harmony in line with Spain’s changing culinary scene drive their style toward more digestible wines that appeal to the younger wine-drinking crowd.
“But big change only happens with a generational change,” he said, even though there are lots of wines that dwell upon the safe, old recipe with creamy oak and lots of extraction of ultra-ripe fruit. At best, they can deliver safe but also predictable wines with outstanding quality, and there is still a big market for that.
But the wines made by the talented, new-generation winemakers like Huber and Tatjana and the others we spoke to are anything but banal, with less of the winemaker’s fingerprints on the final product. Their one commonality is making the right decisions when it comes to letting the terroir speak for itself in the wines.
And when Spanish terroir speaks, it is powerful, whether showing off Atlantic freshness, Mediterranean energy or anything in between. The result – premium wines with a focus on drinkability – would make anyone want to jump on the bandwagon.
– Zekun Shuai, Senior Editor
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SEE MORE OF OUR ANNUAL AND VINTAGE REPORTS:
RHONE ANNUAL REPORT: HARMONY IN THE VALLEY, AND A REALITY CHECK
SOUTH AFRICA’S WINE SOUL: CHENIN AND CHARDONNAY LEAD A VARIETAL EVOLUTION
2019 BORDEAUX JOINS STERLING TRIO CAPPING HISTORIC DECADE
