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Alfredo Maestro El Marciano Garnacha, Castilla y León, Spain 2022 (from £23.35, aduv.co.uk; buonvino.co.uk) Over the past couple of decades, few would dispute that Spain has been one of the two or three most exciting wine countries in the world. From Galicia in the far northwest to Jumilla in the southeast, a wine culture that had for much of the 20th century tended to the suffocatingly stuffy and traditional (with a surfeit of dusty wines to match), and then, in the 1990s and early 2000s, overcompensated with wines that were too-often flashy, overblown and lacking in local character, has been reinvigorated by a bunch of curious and sensitive winemakers rediscovering old vines and local grapes to make wines full of distinctive personality. It’s a shift in approach and style that can be summed up in microcosm by the return to prominence of the widely planted but hitherto rather underrated red grape variety, garnacha, in wines of fragrant, joyously juicy expressiveness such as El Marciano.
Joan D’Anguera Altaroses, Montsant, Spain 2021 (£26.45, parched.wine; sipwines.shop) Like many of the best new-wave Spanish garnachas, El Marciano comes from old vines (70 years old in this case) growing in remote high-altitude sites (El Marciano comes from a site in Avila province at some 1,000m above sea level) on granite soils in the Sierra de Gredos mountain range west of Madrid. Gredos garnachas from producers such as Daniel Ramos, Daniel Landi, and Bodegas Marañones, tend to have a slinky feel, pale colour, red-fruited charm and aromatic finesse that invites comparisons with pinot noir from Burgundy – albeit with southern scents of wild herbs, fennel and subtle warm earthiness. There is a similar sense of roeship and cherry fruit and levity of feel mixed with Mediterranean wild herbiness in the wines made at the biodynamic Joan D’Anguera winery in another Garnacha hotspot: Catalonia’s Montsant, not least in their exquisite single-vineyard wine, Altaroses.
Ramón Bilbao Edición Limitada Garnacha, Rioja, Spain 2020 (£17.95, slurp.co.uk) Other garnachas I’ve enjoyed recently include a pair from the northeastern region of Aragon: the gloriously supple, unforced blackcurrant, cherry and raspberry of Bodega Jesus Romero Rubus Quercus 2023 (£15, highburgyvintners.co.uk) from the highlands of Calatayud and the bargainous, slightly sweet, big-and-bouncy berry fruit of Asda Extra Special Garnacha 2023 (£6.75) from the Cariñena appellation. Spain’s most important red-wine region, Rioja, has also been getting in on the garnacha act, with the variety, which for years has played second fiddle to tempranillo, enjoying a new lease of life. Wines and smaller producers to look out for include Sierra de Toloño (La Dula), Contino and Miguel Merino (la Insula), but the fashion has very much hit the Rioja mainstream, with one of Rioja’s biggest producers, Campo de Viejo, making a good-value bright-and-juicy expression that you can find in most supermarkets for around £7, and the consistently good Ramón Bilbao having just introduced a lush but refined and nicely balanced limited edition bottling.
