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JR's notes:

This article was commissioned in May 1997 by the contract publishers of the Madrid Airport Magazine. It never appeared, due to a falling-out between the publisher and the airport. It's a general overview of how Spanish wine was looking at that time.

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SPANISH WINES - A BRAVE NEW 'OLD' WORLD

By John Radford

You can buy wine because you like it or you can buy wine because somebody else tells you that you ought to like it... Even in these enlightened times, there are still those self- appointed 'experts' who like to flaunt their prejudices. Fortunately, most of us - those who actually like the stuff and are prepared to experiment and cough up our own hard-earned coin-of-the-realm to buy it and enjoy it - have moved on.

The 'New World' broke the mould. Suddenly, we stopped laughing at 'Empire Burgundy' and 'California Chablis' when they renamed themselves 'Australian Cabernet- Shiraz' and 'Napa Valley Chardonnay'. Then along came South America, Eastern Europe and (eventually) South Africa, but the spell was already broken, the cat was out of the bag, the balloon had gone up: good wine, even great wine didn't have to be French, after all!

So where does Spain fit into this vinous virtual-reality perception paradigm? For people who know and love it, the problem never existed. We were enjoying our Rioja and our Scala Dei, our Valdepeñas and (of course) our Oloroso while the rest of the world thought 'Spanish Burgundy' and 'Spanish Sauternes' were where it began and ended. Indeed, given the prices we were paying in those days, there are those cynics who wish that the bushel had never been removed to reveal the light beneath, but it would be churlish to deny Spanish wine its own brave new 'old' world - even if, as with most things in Spain, it's taken a little bit longer to see the light than in some other countries.

The reason for this was one of supply and demand: Spain consumed vast quantities of its own wine with consummate gusto and let the rest of the world go scurrying on its way. However, the market was changing. People were becoming more choosy about their wine. As export markets warmed to the delights, adventurous wine-drinkers began to ask for more: 'Spain's a big country - what else does it have to offer?' And, as Spaniards themselves moved towards better wines some traditional areas, used to selling everything they could produce into an undemanding local market discovered that they could only sell at ever-decreasing prices - or not at all.

Fortunately, most bodegueros saw this as the opportunity to re-equip and reinvest, and this also coincided with a new generation of 'baby boomer' winemakers taking control of family wineries. The post-war generation had had the opportunity to learn about the technicalities of winemaking as well as to visit export markets for themselves - particularly in northern Europe and America - to see what the customers actually wanted to buy. Add to this the spirit of confidence which has accompanied Spain's gradual integration in the European Union, and banks became more interested in investing, regional governments happier to smooth the path of new development, and even - God help us - traditionalists more willing to experiment with new ideas... The stage was set.

It's taken the intervening ten years for most of Spain's wine regions to get their act together, but the act is becoming Oscar-winning. Taking the original highlighters first, Rioja is better than it's ever been: whether your taste is for the gorgeous strawberry fruitiness of the Tempranillo grape in Vino Joven (young wine from the most recent vintage) or the unabashed Christmas-pudding richness and chestnut burnish of a great Gran Reserva you'll find them both in fine form.

Navarra's results are, perhaps, even more impressive: an area once known only for its (admittedly excellent) pink wines now turns out some of northern Spain's finest reds (mainly from Tempranillo and Garnacha grapes but also with Cabernet-Sauvignon and Merlot) and some 'new age' barrel-fermented whites made mainly from the Viura. Catalunya (and particularly Penedès) won its early fame with Cabernet-Sauvignon and Chardonnay wines made with more than a hint of Californian style, but the real breakthrough has been in developing its own grapes and styles of wine, sometimes in partnership with international varieties. Fresh crisp white wines made from Macabeo, Xarel.lo and Parellada and warm, fruity blends of Garnacha and Tempranillo fill the middle-ground of the market with great success. In Ribera del Duero they've rediscovered the glossy black glory of the Tinto Fino (Tempranillo) grown in the crisp, clear alpine atmosphere of some of Spain's highest vineyards t o give some of the country's finest young red wines...

...And we begin to see a pattern emerge. If the catalyst for the new-wave in Spanish wines was success with 'new world' winemaking techniques and 'imported' varieties, then the breakthrough has been the discovery that Spain's own, indigenous 'old world' varieties can perform just as well. All they were waiting for was the right kind of handling. The Verdejo, in Rueda, is a case in point. The grape and its juice oxidise so rapidly that, in the old days, they were very often useless before they even got to the winery. Today with dawn picking, fast transfer, chilled pressing and blanketing with inert gases to keep out the oxygen, the Verdejo makes one of Spain's greatest white wines - packed with fruit, crisp with fresh acidity and rich with the honeyed scents of a long, golden autumn. The same has happened with the fabulous but expensive Albariño in Galicia and formerly-unregarded Garnacha in Priorato: good vine-husbandry and inspired winemaking are proving that Spain has untold riches in its vineyards if only man can be persuaded to make the effort to tease them out.

This revolution is not confined the famous 'classic' wine-producing areas of the north, however. In the Levant and Murcia the Monastrell (the grape which the French call Mourvèdre) has changed from being a producer of thick, oxidised, high-alcohol 'plonk' into the progenitor of crisp, deliciously fruity young wines with a delightful 'bramble' aroma; in western Castile the Godello is producing white wines with a wonderful, herby aroma and delicious, lipsmacking fruit. In Binissalem (Mallorca) wine made with the Manto Negro is showing impressive ageing potential in oak, and in the Canary Islands they're extracting powerful fruit and style from the Listán Negro as well as rediscovering the delights of Shakespeare's rich, sweet 'Canary-Sack'.

And then there are such obscurities as the Juan García and the Mencía in Castile, the humble Cayetana and Pardina in Extremadura and the once-despised Airén of La Mancha, all of which are showing astonishing potential in the right hands. These, then, are just a few of the new ideas circulating amongst Spanish winemakers in the late 1990s. So much change has taken place in the past few years that we may expect to see some startling developments, perhaps even before the end of the century.

Not everyone has joined in, however. There are still sleepy village co-operatives dispensing bulk-wine to local residents who bring their own plastic containers... But even here, even in the remotest parts where bottles sometimes seem to be considered a new-fangled and unnecessarily complex idea, there's always the small winery tucked away behind the pig-farm, with a maverick winemaker with a single tank and a new strain of yeast and a bee in his bonnet about what can be achieved if he can only... Just... Get this particular batch to ferment the way he wants it to...

...And that's why, for me at least, Spain has been the most exciting wine-producing country in Europe for at least the last decade, and promises to keep delivering surprises well into the next century.

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