When I think about the 2,000 Spanish wines we tasted this year, I want to grab a corkscrew and start opening bottles. We tasted so many delicious and drinkable wines last summer in Spain and they offer great value for money and are also fabulous for the cellar. We hope this list of our Top 100 Spanish Wines in 2019 reflects this.

A new classicism runs through the best wines of Spain that recalls the days when wines aged beautifully for decades but also offered supreme drinkability on release. This is what we looked for in the best wines of Spain this year and most of the wines below have these qualities.

The ranking of the wines is done primarily on our scores. The wines are grouped by points and then ordered by my preference. We rated five Spanish wines 100 points this year, so it was a tough call naming the No. 1 Spanish Wine of the Year 2019. But after careful thought, it had to be the Dominio de Pingus Ribera del Duero Pingus 2016 (100 points). I can still remember the first time I tasted the wine last summer and my only words were “wow.” I honestly couldn’t stop drinking the wine because of its incredible complexity, harmony and drinkability. It really was love at first taste!

Spain’s supreme 2016 vintage

The 2016 vintage is an excellent year across Spain. All our perfect-rated wines are from that year and many winemakers we met were extremely enthusiastic about the vintage. “The 2016 is fresher than most recent vintages,” admits Peter Sisseck, the owner and winemaker of Dominio de Pingus. “The 2015 was just a tiny bit too much. It’s very important to keep it on the fresh side, harvesting early. 2015 was a flashy wine. But the elegance of the 2016 was unbeatable. I honestly consider the 2016 to be among the greatest made. It comes closest to the kind of wine Pingus should be. It has the freshness and the ripeness. It has such length and strength.”

Wines like Pingus are setting the benchmark for Spain these days. The beautiful precision and unique, subtle character make them Spanish wines for today. We found the old school wines of Spain boring, even undrinkable. They are overdone with too much new (often green) wood, extraction and ripeness. And those received less than outstanding ratings in our tasting earlier this year. But most of the wines we rated were balanced and very drinkable regardless of price. Check out our short report with all the ratings.

Spain released a couple outstanding vintages with 2015 and 2016. Gonzalo Iturriaga de Juan, winemaker at the legendary Ribera del Duero estate of Vega Sicilia, told me during my visit to the property in June: “Some may prefer the 2015, which was a hotter and slightly shorter crop in most parts of Spain. But we prefer the 2016, which was slightly cooler and a larger harvest that gave producers the opportunity to make more balanced wines. Meanwhile, 2017 was too hot and dry while 2018 was very inconsistent – we had rain and a lot of problems.”

Read more: Top 100 Spanish wines of 2018

The ‘crunch’ factor

Well-known names like Pingus, Vega, Artadi, Telmo Rodriguez, Muga, Marqués de Murrieta, Rioja Alta, and Sierra Cantabría dominate our list of best wines we tasted from Spain in 2019. The list clearly declares our love for tempranillo and the best regions for that unique grape: Rioja and Ribera del Duero. But regions like Priorat, Ribeira Sacra and Rías Baixas also have a strong presence.

We also love the garnachas from around Madrid with the team at Comando G making soulful and fresh reds emphasizing terroir more than technique or wood. “I don’t like jammy reds,” said Fernando García, one of the owners of Comando G. “I like my reds crunchy.”

We like the “crunchy” description for nearly all our favorite reds from Spain. It suggests a freshness and drinkability that makes them great to drink by themselves or with food. It’s a joy to crack open these bottles, be they a 15 buck garnacha or a hundred dollar plus collectible. Moreover, the best Spanish whites, particularly from Galicia, share this brightness and energy combined with terroir-driven aromas and flavors.

And we don’t want to forget the wonderful Jerez. I included several sherries in the Top 100 and we want to taste more next year. There are some real treasures to be found. Senior editor Nick Stock and I really hope you find some treasures for yourself in this list.

– James Suckling, CEO & editor