by AJ Linn
One thing stares you in the face when you research an article like this. We pay too much for our wine. There can be few other products in the world not classed as out-and out-luxury items that appear to be priced according to the whim of the producer, without any justification for such pricing.
I have written previously that no wine in Spain can cost more than €30 per bottle to produce, no matter what the pedigree or the production methods, (okay, maybe you can justify a higher figure if you have a bank loan at 25% interest), so a wine in Spain costing €70 is giving at least €40 clear profit to the winery: quite a nice chunk of money if you are selling 10,000 bottles a year!
The problem is that your average wine drinker has a snobbish streak running through him, and while he may drink Pedro Soap’s vino del día at home, he would never order it in a restaurant or serve it to guests at a dinner party. Producers are aware of this factor and market their wines accordingly, and although it would be perfectly viable and of course profitable for them to sell their wine at, say, €5, they are scared of under-pricing it and getting a reputation for making cheap wine.
It’s all about positioning in marketing-speak!
It is a great challenge for the grower, and there are two clear ways to go: you make the best wine in Spain possible and sell it at a price that gives you a fair profit – regardless of any other factor; or you make a conscious decision to spend a fortune on promotion and allow for the cost of this in the price per bottle. Unfortunately too many wines are marketed according to this latter option with the result that the drinking public is nicely tricked into paying far more than the wine is really worth at the bodega door. There are hundreds of examples of this practice, and while I am not going to name and shame any of them here, my estimate would be that a large percentage of Spanish wine drinkers end up buying mediocre wines in Spain at prices inflated by excessive marketing costs, believing as they raise the glass to their lips that they are discerning buyers of a premium product.
All this was brought home to me as I was researching this article. There really are some excellent wines out there at prices that would still have seemed low even five years ago. In fact, researching the piece took far longer than anticipated – simply because there are so many excellent, economically-priced wines in the stores.
Firstly, the ground rules. Do not expect a two euro bottle of wine to have the same characteristics as one costing five times as much. It will be a wine of the year, meaning it comes from the most recent vintage that has been bottled and at most will have a few months bottle-age and no cask-age. Nor will you usually find the year stated on the label, although if you read the small print on the back label it may appear there, although there is no legal requirement for it to do so. You may also find some reference to wood ageing, such as roble (oak) or barrica (barrel) which simply means it may have been stored in a barrel for a few months to let it mellow and to take away the sharpness all young wines have.
So far my comments refer to red wines in Spain. When considering whites and rosados, the drinker has a much easier task: buy according to region and price.
White Riojas are never budget priced with the possible exception of the excellent Marques de Caceres (white not red), and white Ribera del Dueros do not exist; they are called Rueda, from the next-door DO region, and very good they are too. You can normally choose between a Verdejo and a Sauvignon Blanc grape and this is largely a question of degrees of dryness. The region’s rosados come from Cigales and are cheap as chips and well worth buying. Pass quickly to Cataluña, or more precisely to Penedés, largest home to the white wines of this region. Unfortunately for them their heyday passed with the popularity of Rueda, and although there are some excellent Catalan whites, particularly from Miguel Torres, (their Milmanda Chardonnay from Conca de Barbará is unquestionably one of Spain’s fines white wines – at a price.), so let’s go to Galicia, where unfortunately dinky-sized vineyards and limited production dictate that there are very few bargains, certainly not from the Albariño region. Ribeiros are another matter but tend to have a high level of acidity.
The bargains come from the secondary regions, although they will take exception to being referred to as such: Navarra, Toro, Campo de Borja, even Madrid, to mention but a few. Forget about the tertiary regions (my classifications) such as Valdepeñas, La Mancha, Jumilla, Cariñena, Yecla. Overall the wines of Navarra win hands down. As a region abutting Rioja the producers have always felt overshadowed by their big neighbour and so, as the advert goes, they try harder – and, more important, price more realistically.
If you have never really thought about drinking a Navarra red wine (and the whites are not bad, although the rosados are better), start now. For any Spanish red wine the tempranillo grape is king, however much it is blended with syrah/shiraz, garnacha, macabeo, and other non-autoctonous varieties, and a straight tempranillo will always be cheaper. But don’t ignore wines from non-regions, meaning they are located just outside the official denomination zones and therefore cannot call their wines Rioja or whatever; these are always competitively-priced.
Where to buy? An unscientific survey of Marbella’s outlets reveals that La Cañada’s Alcampo hypermarket is a happy hunting ground, (also for cheeses – must be the French owners’ influence), and although El Corte Inglés/Hipercor stocks many of the same wines, there can be a considerable price difference; (eg Marques de Griñon’s excellent red Durius from Castilla-León costs €3.79 in Alcampo and €4.30 in Hipercor). There are also wines that you will find nowhere else at the lowest price level, such as the very acceptable Pitarra from Extremadura at €2.45, and Vino Mar at 95 cents. A Bajoz from Toro costs €2.99 and a good chardonnay from Huesca the same. White Ruedas abound for two to three euros and for rosado lovers the Somontano section is worthwhile. Pick of the bunch without question is a red Navarra, Alarnes, at one euro.
Moving up-market, Vinacoteca La Cartuja in central Marbella has a superb Campo de Borja Garnacha, Coto Hayas, for €3.50 and from the oddly-named Vivir Vivir range from Ribera del Duero a wonderful 2008 red at €3.50; (Arte de Vivir 2007 is €4.50). Valpincia white and red cannot be ignored at around €3.95, and the Valventos Chardonnay is a snip at €3.50.
The possibilities are so enormous that a short article cannot do justice to the topic. What is as plain as a pikestaff is that to enjoy Spanish wine it is not necessary to spend double figures on a bottle – unless the intention is to impress your dinner guests!
