That was one of the more troubling revelations from an interview last week with Bodega Numanthia’s estate director Julio Rodriguez and head winemaker Jesús Jiménez.
Expecting the producers to mention heatwaves and drought as the major threats to viticulture in Toro, db came away surprised to learn that there is a different and more immediate challenge to the incredible pre-phylloxera plants in the region, which is located in Zamora, Castile and León, and home to a highly adapted, robust local clone of Tempranillo called Tinto de Toro.
These grapes are used by the property to make its deliciously rich and long-lived red wines, notably Numanthia’s flagship Termanthia – an expression from ungrafted vines with an average age of 120 years old.
However, due to financial assistance for installing solar panels on farmland, some landowners are opting to switch from grape-growing to supplying energy to the country’s grid because the returns are better.
As a result, one of the motivating forces driving Rodriguez and Jiménez to raise awareness for Toro’s wines from Tempranillo is a desire to preserve the region’s ancient vines, which are relics of viticulture as practised centuries ago.
200 year-old ungrafted vines
“Some of the vineyards are 200 years-old, and they have survived because they have always made such good wine – the owners over history have never pulled them out because the grapes were excellent,” Rodriguez told db in London on 14 May, stressing that the vines are old because the wines they yield are good, and not the other way round.
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