Marta Labanda led me up the steep, black slopes of Barranca del Obispo. Here in Lanzarote, growers cultivate vines in hollows dug out of the granular black volcanic ash. It’s an extraordinary lunar landscape, and brutally hard work: everything is done by hand and yields are tiny. On slopes like this one, where Labanda and her husband Dani Ramírez have revived 200-year-old vines for their Titerok-Akaet wines, it’s an even greater feat. And yet while these conditions are extreme, the pair exemplify the spirit which makes Spain such an exciting wine scene now.
That sense of excitement was tangible at Tim Atkin’s big tasting of Canarian wines in Lanzarote earlier this month. But I’ve seen something similar time and again recently: at the buzzing Barcelona wine week; at last year’s Viñateros tasting in London, showcasing smaller producers from all over Spain; at a local festival in Cambados, capital of Rías Baixas wine country, and meeting producers from Ribera del Duero to Valencia over the past couple of years. There is a dynamism to Spanish winemaking that has few European equivalents (there are parallels in Greece, though on a much smaller scale.)
The contrast to many more traditional regions is glaring. I can’t think of anywhere in France with the kind of buzz to it that, for instance, Sierra de Gredos or the Canaries have now. In Bordeaux, this year’s disastrous en primeur campaign suggests that many wine drinkers have simply moved on. Burgundy’s prices have put serious wines beyond the reach of most. And while I had fun at the Grandi Langhe Piemonte gathering in Turin this January, there wasn’t anything like the kind of innovation you see in Spain. Why is that?
“My theory is that in Spain, the idea of the vigneron (or viñatero) disappeared at some point in the 20th century,” says Ben Henshaw, founder of leading Spanish importer Indigo Wine. “Moreover, most bodegas in the 1990s and 2000s began investing heavily in cellars over vineyards.”
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