LOCAL HEROES

Spain has been shaping the global culture of wine for millennia. But in recent centuries, politics and pestilence have threatened to flatten and suppress the incredible richness and diversity of the Iberian peninsula’s viticulture.

Archeologists trace grape plants in Spain back to the Tertiary period (66 million to 2.6 million years ago), and there is evidence that viticulture has been practiced since at least 4000 BC. In 1100 BC, Carthaginians arrived and improved techniques, and under Roman rule, Spanish wines began to be sent around Europe, landing on royal tables in France and England.

There were a few bumps in the road, but until the phylloxera epidemic, which decimated the European wine industry, Spain was producing a range of exciting wines that reflected its various microclimates, from coastal regions near the Mediterranean and Atlantic, mountains regions near the Pyrenees and Cantabrian Cordillera and the vast Meseta plateau that sprawls across central Spain.

While viticulture returned after the epidemic in the early part of the 20th century, World War II and Franco’s military dictatorship from 1939 to 1975 froze the industry, suppressed technological advancement and forced many viñateros and regions to plant and make wine that was focused on quantity, not quality. Out with the low-yielding, fussy grapes requiring TLC. In with hardy survivors with mass appeal. But in recent decades, wine growers have returned to their roots.

“In the early 1980s, Miguel Torres began placing yearly advertisements inviting anyone who knew of unidentified grapevines to contact the winery,” says Evan Goldstein, master sommelier and president of Full Circle Wine Solutions in San Carlos, California. “These ads placed in local newspapers and magazines throughout his home region of Catalonia kicked off a project aimed at restoring Catalonia’s ancestral grape varieties, many of which had been lost to phylloxera in the late 19th century.”

Slowly, but surely, Spain has begun producing some most exciting, distinct and innovative wines using low-intervention and ecologically responsible farms with rare indigenous grapes. “More near term, consider the fact that Mencía was essentially a forgotten grape pre-Álvaro Palacios some 25 years ago,” Goldstein continues. “Producers like Alberto Orte have identified more than 200 old clones and 22 forgotten varieties, including Beba, Canocazo and Mantuo Castellano.” This is happening in well-known regions like Rioja and Ribera del Duero, but also in lesser-known regions, like Ronda near Málaga.

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

Juan Carlos Sancha is on a one-man mission to reverse the trend kicked off in the 1980s of planting Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and the like in Rioja, and focusing more on popular native grapes. Much of his work can be enjoyed through his role as director of viticulture and enology at Bodegas Sancha. Currently, 14 varieties are approved in Rioja, and Garnacha, Tempranillo and Viura occupy more than 90 percent of the vineyard acreage, Carlos explains.

With the help of Fernando Martínez de Toda Fernández, a professor of viticulture at Universidad de La Rioja, he began visiting the old vineyards of Rioja to discover varieties on the edge of destruction. The rescue mission managed to capture 30 minority varieties which they preserved and replanted, including Maturana Blanca and Tinta, Monastel de Rioja and Turruntés. If these and other varieties are not preserved, Sancha says, “they
will be lost to time, and we will lose our connection to our viticultural, enological and
ecological heritage.”

Today, Sancha offers three lines of wines that produce 70,000 bottles annually. Ad Libitum, Peña El Gato and Cerro La Isa feature many of the native grapes he liberated from eradication, alongside Garnacha.

At Bodega Lanzaga, vintner extraordinaire Telmo Rodríguez is also at the vanguard of the movement to make terroir-driven, organic wines “de pueblo,” which is modeled on the ancient tradition of small-parcel wines. “My parents instilled in me the spirit of adventure. They found Remelluri, I was going to find some of the most beautiful vineyards of Spain,” Rodríguez told VOICES in an interview. “The journey took us 30 years. Our ambition was never to have the biggest winery and make a lot of money but produce the best wine in the world. We wanted to achieve that by doing something small, creating a new model.”

In Ronda, oenologist-in-chief Ana de Castro explains that Bodega La Melonera, with close to 50 acres under vine, was launched in 2003 with the sole goal of reviving a lost winemaking tradition that dates back 3,000 years. “In 2003, no Andalusian red grape varieties were known, but through a facsimile of an 1807 book The Varieties of Grapevines Growing in Andalusia written by a Spanish botanist named Simón de Rojas, it was clear that many red varieties were grown there,” de Castro says. “We felt an injustice, and wanted to bring to light such a valuable heritage.”

Over time, de Castro says that environmental benefits, which they had not considered previously, emerged as they rediscovered and revived almost-lost red varieties like Melonera Rayada, Blasco, Romé, Tintilla de Rota and Quebrantatinajas, and whites like Vijiriega and Doradilla. “The grapes are perfectly adapted to our land, with thick skins and high acidity, making them capable of withstanding the high temperatures we experience in the summer,” she says, adding that by the time they found the grape with the help of a local government research center, there were only five Rayada Melonera vines left.

FARMING FOR FUTURE

Winemakers are also increasingly eager to make more responsible farming choices, believing that organic viticulture creates tastier wine, while also building healthier vineyards for the future. Susana Portabella explains that the organic and Demeter-certified Raventós i Blanc actually withdrew from the Cava DO in 2012 to work toward creating a new appellation that the team believed would set higher standards in wine production, and require stricter farming and winemaking standards.

“We reduce carbon emissions as much as possible,” the winery’s director of communication explains. “Land, vines, animals and man work together as an agricultural whole. Our estate has become a true refuge for biodiversity where the dense forests, the lake, the river and the riverbanks teem with life.”

The estate is more than just vineyards and winery, Portabella says. It has been in the Raventós family for 21 generations, since 1497. “This is a legacy of which the family is tremendously proud,” she says.

Raventós has, like other pioneering growers, focused on reviving ancient grapes like Sumoll and Malvasia de Sitges, because they are, Portabella says, “adapted to drought, heat and cold. Unlike Macabeo or Parellada varieties that lose acidity in hot summers, Sumoll and Malvasia de Sitges maintain it well.”