Old vines, new region

Spain seems to sprout new wine regions as often as fashion designers produce collections. Rioja and Ribera del Duero now look distinctly old hat whereas the likes of Bierzo, Valdeorras, Calatayud, Campo de Borja and Manchuela are looking rather Philip Treacy.

Because new tends to mean as-yet-undiscovered and, therefore, good value, I follow the evolving Spanish wine map with close interest but, at the end of last year, I found myself in a wine region in Tempranillo country in north-west Spain that was previously unknown to me.

Stretching 20 miles north-east along the Pisuerga River from the old capital of Castile Valladolid, Cigales was denominated as a wine region as recently as 1991 and its modern incarnation dates effectively from the late 1990s. Once Philip II had uprooted the local forests for the Spanish armada, any agriculturally viable land in this barren, impoverished countryside was devoted to cereals. Vines were grown on only the very poorest soils, and their produce funnelled into sturdy dark pink wines, of local interest only, made from mixing red and white grapes. Viticulture was a weekend hobby and every one of the 11 villages in the region has a castle and a cluster of tiny domestic bodegas burrowed into the hillside where families still come to roast lamb and feast as a sort of Castilian alternative to tending an allotment.

The great advantage of Cigales never having been a dynamic wine region is that viticultural methods have remained doggedly traditional. The climate is dry and harsh. At 650m-800m altitude, and with relatively low rainfall, agrochemicals have rarely been used to any great extent. Drought and frost are the chief enemies of the vine here, not disease. Cigales is higher and cooler than Toro to the west so its wines tend to be rather more structured. It is much smaller and much less famous than Ribera del Duero to the east, so land and wines tend to be considerably less expensive. But the best of them seem to have very promising ageing potential and – a big mark in their favour in my book – very few suffer the over-oaking that seems endemic in status-conscious Ribera del Duero.

The other advantage is that, since most growers have treated their holdings as a hobby, there has been little incentive to keep replanting vines, so more than half of them are more than 60 years old. One of the oldest producers, César Príncipe, lays claim to 17 hectares of vines that are between 60 and 100 years old. Valdelosfrailes, part of the Matarromera group that owns no fewer than three bodegas in nearby Ribera del Duero, says the vines in its Costanas vineyard are 125 years old and pre-date the vine pest phylloxera’s predations. The 2003 made from them certainly seemed to be a wonderful expression of altitude and minerality. Old vines are capable of producing particularly concentrated fruit, especially from the bushvines that predominate on the impoverished pebbly soils over the hard clay of the region’s higher ground.

Jaime Echevarri of the most cosmopolitan producer, Finca Museum, part of the Baron de Ley group, described its top vineyard to me as “similar to Châteauneuf-du-Pape but with concrete underneath”. Another producer, Enrique Concejo, says the soils responsible for its Carraduenas bottling are more like Pomerol. Either way, the rash of new exporting producers do not lack ambition.

Typically, César Príncipe made dark pink clarete for the bars of Valladolid for years until its oenologist persuaded the owners that the quality of the region’s dark-skinned grapes – mainly Tempranillo with a little Garnacha Tinta (the juicier Grenache) – was far too good to be diluted by the local Albillo and Verdejo white grapes. But it was two women, itinerant winemaker Ana Martín, and María Pinacho, who claim responsibility for “the first modern red Cigales”. Their Translanzas is a dense, spicy, ageworthy wine made from a Tempranillo vineyard planted in 1940.

The late 1990s saw a flurry of incomers and locals who woke up to the possibilities of these old vines and the harsh climate, but none was more dramatic than the arrival in 1999 of representatives from the publicly quoted Baron de Ley in Rioja way to the east, owners of Spain’s biggest branded Rioja El Coto. General manager Echevarri admits that the company actually wanted to expand into Ribera del Duero but left it so late that prices were already silly. The company planned to take a look over the border at port country in the Douro valley in Portugal but Spanish wine writer Andrés Proensa suggested the company prospectors should stop off in Cigales.

“We were immediately fascinated by what we found,” Echevarri told me. “We saw a purity that was unique in Spain – not spoilt in the sense of Rioja. The land was terribly fragmented but the quality was such that it was worth doing lots of lots of individual negotiations. We contracted 60 per cent of the vineyards over 60 years old for 10 years. That meant 800 hectares but, with average yields of only one to two tonnes per hectare, it was not that much wine. The Castilians are a bit like the Scots – very suspicious and closed. They called us los Americanos at first because the contract guy was blond.

“The grapes here may be Tempranillo, as in Rioja, but they’re much thicker-skinned and need very different winemaking. After 10 years, we’re just learning how to crack it.” In 2000, Baron de Ley started work on a €15m palace of a bodega for its new Museum project in Cigales. To say it is different from the Cigales norm would be an understatement. But the company has cleverly recruited Isaac Fernandez, nephew of famed winemaker Mariano García, who has already made wine at his uncle’s Mauro bodega and in Bierzo to the north-west, whose wines he thinks lack the structure he finds in Cigales. Museum has the muscle to get the name Cigales known in markets such as the US, surely an asset for the growing number of accomplished producers in this small but characterful region.

More columns at www.ft.com/robinson

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Top picks from Cigales

Translanzas 2005
Sinforiano Vaquero Reserva 2005
Museum Real Reserva 2004
Valdelosfrailes, Pago de las Costanas 2003
Cigales
César Príncipe 2000, and 2005

Full tasting notes on Purple pages of www.jancisrobinson.com