A Complete Overview of Spanish Red Wines

Hello bonjour and welcome to your new Alti Wine Exchange video. Welcome to this channel where we learn about, we explore and we taste the wonderful world of wine. If you're not familiar with the Alti Wine Exchange, it is a wine investment and trading platform as well as a wine club. Make sure to check out the link in the video description to learn more. After looking into some of the most important wine countries in the world, in our previous series, we looked at France, Italy and Portugal, I want to start with you today, a journey through the third biggest wine producing nation in the world, and one of the most ancient ones at that, and really one that is very personally, very dear to my heart, I spent some time working there as a winemaker. Very personal favourite of mine for sure, yes, we're talking about Spain. Today I just want to give you a quick round-up of what Spain is all about, and I'm sure many do not necessarily realize how diverse Spanish wine is. We've all heard of course about the wines from Rioja, made from the iconic Spanish Tamponillo grape, but what else is there around the Iberian Peninsula? What do the Spaniards drink with their Paella? It cannot be all red and all Rioja, right? So let's find out. Here I mean to give you just a quick overview of all the main Spanish red wine styles you should really know about if you want to claim your understanding a little bit, the world of wine, just a little. I'll get into the details of every region and style with individual videos in our Spanish wine series, with the whites and the sherries as well included, we'll make around 5 or 6 episodes to cover all of those, so make sure to stay tuned. Here, I just want to illustrate and demonstrate that there's way more to Spanish wine than just what people think about when they think about Spanish wine, which is often one single name, Rioja. Of course, Rioja is one of the biggest wine regions in Spain, and certainly the most famous for sure. All of Spain's top wineries are in Rioja and make Rioja DOCA wines. Rioja is in the north-central part of Spain and make fantastic Tamponillo-based red wines, often famously aged for a long time in American oak in particular, although this traditionally very oaky style has evolved now towards a more modern Bordeaux style with French oak that is more used, but we'll discuss that when we talk about Rioja specifically in our future video. I'll link to it here. When it's ready, you'll have it right here. Let's move on to other wines from Spain. Because Spain is literally covered in vineyards everywhere, so of course, there's going to be a lot more to it than just the Rioja. Now where do we start? Let's move a little south from Rioja to the proper central Spain that is broadly called Castilla. Here you have two main regions, administrative regions, that are called Castilla and León, which is home to another very illustrious Spanish wine region called the Ribera del Duero, understand the banks of the Duero river. It's an extremely reputable wine region within Spain. Every Spanish person knows about it, everybody knows about it in Spain, a little bit less outside of the borders, but it makes some of the very best wines in the country. In fact, it makes what is generally considered the most expensive Spanish wine, that is called Pingos, and the most iconic Spanish wine, called Vega Sicilia Unico, as well as plenty of high quality reds based also on the Tamponillo grape, just like in Rioja, but in a richer, a little bit of a denser style. Castilla y León also counts with rather famous appellations such as Toro, which is actually an area I happened to work in for two years as a winemaker. They make the biggest and the boldest Tamponillo wines in Spain, but with remarkable quality, quite bold and big, but really good wines in Toro. Check them out. Nearby is also the trending Bierzo denominación, and it's rather but really delicious, really crisp and spicy, local, really unique local grape called Mencía. The other Castilla is Castilla La Mancha, the home of Don Quixote de la Mancha, where he used to fight windmills, I'm told. This is one of the biggest wine producing regions in the world, in fact, it used to make a lot of cheap wine, often historically to be distilled for brandy production. But it's now known a renaissance over the past 20 years, and it's home to a myriad of larger cooperative projects, but also smaller wine projects delivering very good value wines from grapes such as Tamponillo, Grenache, Syrah, Cabernet, Monastereo and more. One to have in mind because this is a really huge region, but increasing quality, extremely good value. Some notable appellation names in this area include Manchuelo, Toledo, Ucles and Valdepena. Moving north-east of the country is a region you can't ignore in Spain, that's around Barcelona on the Mediterranean coast, called Catalonia or Catalunya as they say locally. They have their own language, Catalan language there, my own surname happens to be from there, and they make a lot of wine, especially grapes for the sparkling Cabar wines that we'll talk about in another episode. They also make a lot of red wine, obviously because they have a Mediterranean climate that is very suitable to producing red wines. Most notably, there are two main famous regions on the global scale in Catalonia. First of which is the one that is called Priorat. This is definitely within the top 3 Spanish wine regions, with Rioja y Ribedra del Duero as we mentioned, but with wines not based on Tamponillo this time anymore, but rather Mediterranean grapes, namely Grenache or Garnacha as they say in Spanish, or Carignan, called Cariñena. Priorat has an insane topography, with huge and really steep terraces made of chest rock. Very dry, very mineral terroir making outstandingly concentrated and refined mineral wines, one to explore for sure. The other famous Catalan wine region is located directly west of Barcelona and called Penedès. It's a rather large area with loads of vineyards at different altitudes, coastal ones by the sea, so at sea level, to higher altitudes vineyards in inland hills, and they make a lot of wines from there, including lots of white grapes for sparkling Cava, but also plenty of reds from grapes of all types, local Mediterranean ones such as Grenache or Carignan, but also international grapes like Cabernet and Syrah. It's home to one of the very biggest wine producers in Spain and one of the most famous, called Miguel Torres, who makes a wine staple in many supermarkets all around the world, you may have heard about or seen, called Sangre de Toro, although higher end fine wines also come out of Penedès too. Other lesser known appellations but significant from Cataluña you may want to look into include Monsant, Emporda, Costerts del Segre, Pla de Badges and Tarragona. These two areas deserve a mention here for a complete overview of Spanish reds, even though they shine less brightly on the international wine scene. Those are both located in the centre-north of Spain. Navarra first sits directly south of the Basque country, near Rioja, near the Atlantic Ocean coast as well, so with more of an oceanic influence, home of great rosés but also interesting reds that are in a more cool climate style than the rest of Spain, crisper, with brighter fruit characters and less alcohol. This is a growing area in reputation and one really worth looking into, with lots of different grapes, mainly Tempranillo, Cabernet, Merlot, often blended, so really fine wines, increasing quality, a lot of winemaking history and tradition there as well, but modernity as well. While Aragon also has a long winemaking history, right in the very centre-north of Spain, just below the Pyrenees mountains, very much inland, this time with a continental climate. Not a big reputation for Aragon globally, but a huge variety of styles, with very interesting small projects and bigger ones as well, often combining traditional styles with very local grapes such as the very rare Morristel, together with international grapes such as Cabernet. Very famous appellations in Aragon, at least because they make quite a lot of wine and you can find them for quite cheap or affordable around the world, Calatayud, Cariniena and Somaltano. Finally, let's talk briefly about an interesting Spanish specificity, I would call it, mainly those wines called Binos de Pago. Relatively recently, back in 2003, the Spanish authorities decided to grant a few individual wineries, estates, their own appellations, usually appellations are shared between many producers like Rioja or else, because the whole area has quite a consistent and good terroir for making good wine, but some estates located in less prestigious zones were making outstanding and rather unique wines, those are especially in Castilla La Mancha and Navarra. So those properties, those estates, were granted their own appellation, their own AVA if you wish, or their own Denominación de Origen, as they say in Spanish, their own DO de Pago, Understand Appellation from a Single Estate. There's only about 20 of those and it's quite a necrotal really, but interesting to note as it is a unique feature to Spain, you don't find this very often, although in all fairness, even 20 years after those Binos de Pago were officially recognized, I still remember it, the concept hasn't been particularly successful, it hasn't really made a hit, it remains down to each individual producer to make their own DO stand out of the crowd, and they haven't all achieved fantastic global recognition thanks to this system. It hasn't really worked all that much, but still, it's interesting. And here you have it, this was your quick overview of all the main red wine appellations in Spain. As you've seen, like in most great wine nations, there are wine wonders absolutely everywhere, way beyond the headlines, way beyond famous producers, way beyond Rioja. There's smaller projects, bigger projects, modern projects, small villages and areas making wonderful wines, worth investigating in every corner of it. We'll continue exploring all the wine wonders from Spain, with all the individual regions that I will explore and detail and explain for you in future episodes. Make sure to stay tuned for this and subscribe, share this video with any wine lover that you know that might be interested in this, and I will see you soon in the wonderful world of vino. Salud! Cheers...