Spanish Wines Worth Buying in 2026: 9 Top Picks!

Spain is one of the most exciting countries in the entire world of wine. There's still tremendous value to be had. In this video, I'm going to reveal some of my very favorite Spanish wines to buy currently. There's a variety of styles and regions represented, but the unifying theme is that these are all excellent wines, and they sell for very attractive price points. Most of them range from $20 to $60 per bottle. And if there's any Spanish wines that you really enjoy, please be sure to let us know in the comments below. One of the most exciting producers in Spain has attracted a bit of a cult following. Their top wines sell for hundreds of dollars and are extremely difficult to locate. But fortunately, they also make a more entry-level wine that sells for around $40 per bottle in the United States, and which you can actually track down. This producer has the ambitious goal of elevating Spanish Garnacha to the same level as Syrah in the Northern Rhone. So one of my strongest Spanish wine recommendations comes from Commando G. This is the La Bruja de Rosas. This wine is 100% Garnacha. This wine used to be a blend of fruit from both the Rosas village and Madrid, but now they're focusing exclusively on the Rosas village terroir. Unfortunately, this means that they won't make as much of this wine for the next couple of vintages as they did before, but on the bright side, in my opinion, it's definitely resulted in a better wine. While I enjoyed this wine previously, I think it's taken another step forward by focusing exclusively on fruit from the Rosas village. This fruit tends to be from higher elevation sites and old vines. As such, this wine has a little bit more precision, a better sense of place, and it's more mineral-driven than it was previously. On the winemaking side, they also used some whole cluster fermentation, which adds some intriguing aromatics. The result is an extremely vibrant, expressive example of Spanish Garnacha. You can expect flavors and aromas of wild strawberry, cherry, crushed rock, rose petal, and white pepper. There's fine tannins, ample acidity, and a strong mineral backbone. For about $40 per bottle, this is absolutely one of the best values in all of Spain and a wine that I cannot recommend highly enough. Next up is a world-class wine that comes from one of the top winemakers in the entire world. This is a wine that comes from vines that average more than 100 years of age in a small 1.1 hectare parcel. While this wine is labeled Amancia, there's a smaller amount of Bastardo as well. This vineyard is located in Bierzo, which is in Castilla y León in northwest Spain. The winemaker is the talented Raul Perez, who's been making excellent wine for more than three decades. Winemaking is particularly important with Mancia because unless you harvest it early enough, it can rapidly lose acidity. Mr. Perez uses whole cluster fermentation for this wine to preserve some freshness as well. The result is an extremely impressive wine that's a consistently good choice vintage after vintage. This is the 2023 La Vizcaíno by Raul Perez La Vitoriana Tinto, which I found selling for closer to $50 than $60. This wine features flavors and aromas of blackberry, pepper, anise, and white flowers. There's a long finish and impressive acidity. There's notable purity of fruit on this wine as they mature it in neutral oak of various sizes for only around 11 months or so. So this is definitely a wine that you can enjoy immediately. Next up is a special wine that's produced only in great vintages from this outstanding winery's oldest vineyards. These old vineyards are planted on hillsides and high elevation sites that have poor soils and better drainage. This results in extremely high quality fruit but also extremely low yields. Based in Rioja, Spain, Bodegas Muga is a family-owned, quality-minded producer that embraces traditional winemaking principles but also uses modern technology to make their outstanding wines. So the next top wine for $40 a bottle is the Bodegas Muga Selección Especial Rioja Reserva. This is an impressive wine whenever it's made, so you really can't go wrong buying any of these bottlings. 2019, however, was a truly special vintage for Rioja and arguably one of the best vintages in the last 20 or 25 years. So definitely make it a point to pick up some of the 2019 vintage if you can locate it. But if not, they also made an excellent example in the 2020 vintage. This wine is always a Tempranillo-dominant blend. Recently, it's included about 70% Tempranillo, as well as some Garnacha, Graciano, and Misuelo. You can expect flavors and aromas that include cherry, blackberry, licorice, balsamic, and mixed herbs and spice. There's a long, dry, complex finish. This is definitely a wine that will benefit from a couple years of additional bottle age, and it's an extremely age-worthy wine. So definitely do yourself a favor and put this away in your cellar and resist the urge to try it too soon. You'll be handsomely rewarded if you have the patience. I'm extremely excited about this next top wine for $60 for several reasons. First, it's a rare single vineyard Rioja. Better still, this vineyard comes from an extremely high elevation site in the Sierra Cantabria mountains. While this wine is 100% Tempranillo, it's a special clone of Tempranillo that's almost extinct, called Tempranillo Pailudo. This variant of Tempranillo is known for its finesse, elegance, and aging potential. This wine is also from the 2021 vintage, which was incredibly strong and arguably one of the best vintages in Rioja in recent memory. As such, it's one of the very best wines ever produced by this high-quality producer, which was founded back in 1991. This is the 2021 Signorio de San Vicente Rioja. This wine received tremendous critical acclaim, including a 100-point score from a Spanish critic. This wine features descriptors that include mixed red and black fruit, graphite, balsamic, and dried herbs. They matured this wine in mostly French oak for around 20 months or so. This wine has a long life ahead of it. It should cruise in your cellar for up to two decades or more, so I would definitely recommend getting a few bottles of this one, as I'm quite confident that once you have your first bottle, you're going to wish that you had more in your cellar. They made about 50,000 bottles of this wine, so you should be able to track this one down without too much difficulty. Well, the next wine that I'm buying in 2026 has some descriptors that very much remind me of the Northern Rhone. This is actually a highly acclaimed wine that comes from northern Spain, which over delivers at between $25 and $30 per bottle. This wine is a blend that consists of around 80% Mencia, and there's also some smaller percentages of local grapes. The winemaking adds a lot to this wine, as they use some whole cluster fermentation that adds some intriguing aromatics. They also emphasize the purity of the fruit for this wine in their maturation process, which uses restrained amounts of new oak. In fact, two-thirds of this wine matures in vats. Those of you who are impatient will appreciate the fact that you can enjoy this wine immediately. You don't need to age it further at all. This is the 2022 Guimaro Camino Real Mencia, which features flavors and aromas of mixed red and black fruit, and a smoked meat characteristic that very much reminds me of the Northern Rhone. If you're looking for a wine in the $25 to $30 price point, I strongly recommend you give this wine a try. Next up is a wine that I tried for the first time about five months ago when I visited Rioja, Spain. This is wine that comes from a historic producer that was founded back in 1879. Despite this producer's long history, in my view, production quality has never been higher than some of the wines they've been producing in the past 10 or 15 years. This is Campaña Vinícola del Norte de España, or CVNE for short. So the next top collectible wine is the CVNE La Virgen, aka Pagos de Viña Real. This wine is 100% Tempranillo. The fruit for this wine comes from a very special, small two-hectare plot that's located in Rioja Elevesa. This small parcel is called La Virgen, and there's vines that average an impressive 40 years in this plot. The conditions at La Virgen are ideal for the production of world-class Tempranillo due to the soil conditions, the sun exposure, and the temperatures. These conditions combine to allow the Tempranillo to ripen gradually and slowly over an extended growing season. That helps to preserve freshness and acidity in the fruit, and to ensure consistent ripening year after year. For that reason, I'm not too concerned about specific vintage recommendations for this wine, although I did enjoy the 2020 vintage when I was at the winery. This wine matures for around 12 months in oak, and I found the purity of fruit to be impressive. There were flavors and aromas that included black fruit, anise, cedar, and cloves. This is wine you should be able to find for around $80-90 per bottle. In a recent video that I published on $50 wines, a viewer complained that I didn't include any wines from Spain in that video. So today, I'm going to atone for that mistake by including a second Spanish wine. This is a Tempranillo-based wine, but it's not from Rioja. Instead, it's from Toro. Toro's an interesting wine region in part because it never experienced phylloxera. As such, there's a number of extremely old, ungrafted vines. The vines that produce this wine, for example, average an impressive 79 years of age, with the oldest being planted way back in 1900 and the youngest planted in 1970. I know there's a number of precise people that watch this channel, and so I should mention that this Tempranillo is actually a local clone that's called Tinta de Toro, and that is an indigenous clone that evolved over the years and is well adapted to the extremely harsh climate in Toro wine region. Compared with the Tempranillo that you'd find in either Rioja or even Ribera del Duero, Tinta de Toro produces smaller grapes with thicker skins and more of a dark fruit profile and higher tannins. It appears that there's two different vintages of the Bodegas Vatan Triton Tinta de Toro in the market currently, and both of them were well-received by critics, so you really can't go wrong with either vintage. Located in northwest Spain in the Galicia region, Baldioras produces some of my very favorite white wines from Spain. Notably, however, it also produces some intriguing red wines, such as the next top wine for $40 a bottle. This wine comes from one of the oldest and most historic vineyards in Baldioras. This is a north-facing vineyard, and so the fruit ripens very late in the year over an extended growing season. The result is an extremely intriguing ethereal mineral-driven wine that has some lift to it and some intriguing floral notes, but also some surprising power and concentration. So the next top wine for $40 a bottle is the 2022 Bodegas Avancia Old Vines Mencia, which I found selling for around $39 per bottle. This wine is 100% Mencia. They mature this wine for eight months in French oak. Interestingly, they also use a percentage of carbonic maceration and stem inclusion, which helps to add a little bit of lift to the wine and also makes the wine a bit more approachable right on release. This wine has a medium body and a darker fruit profile, along with flavors and aromas that include graphite, leather, mixed herbs, and pepper. This is an extremely well-balanced wine with fine gradient tannins and ample acidity. It's one you can enjoy immediately, and it's a perfect choice for a red wine for summer. We're going to start out extremely strong with a wine from a historic producer that dates back more than 160 years. This is a wine that's been the favorite for a couple of my most loyal viewers who mention it routinely in some of the comments to my videos. This is a family-owned winery that's currently run by the fourth generation, and they're one of the largest landowners in Rioja, with more than 650 hectares under vine. It's extremely unusual to be able to get a Gran Reserva for around $30 per bottle, but that's very much the case with Faustino Gran Reserva. This wine is dominant in Tempranillo, but they also include smaller amounts of Graciano and Mizuelo. Mizuelo is also known as Carignan in other parts of the world. This highly acclaimed wine is already approachable, but will continue to improve with additional bottle age. This is a wine that features flavors and aromas of blackberry, plum, violets, mixed spice, and chocolate. As with all these wines, you'll definitely need to shop around as some places sell it for higher prices, but I definitely found a number of different places selling this impressive wine for as little as $30 per bottle. Rioja is absolutely one of the very best sources in the world for collectible wines that offer compelling value. Following my visit, I did a detailed deep dive into Rioja and also covered a number of top collectible wines that I recommend. To learn more, please be sure to watch this video that's linked above.