tempranillo

A high quality red wine grape from Spain that appears almost throughout Spain with different names: its spiritual home is in Rioja and Navarre, where it makes up about 70% of most red blends. It is known as Tinto Fino in Ribera del Duero, as Cencibel in La Mancha and Valdepenas and as Ull de Llebre in Catalonia. Wines from the Tempranillo grape tend to have a spicy, herbal and tobacco character, accompanied by ripe strawberry and red cherry fruit. There are fresh, lively, fruit-driven “jovenes” that can be drunk young.

But Tempranillo really comes into its own when aged in oak, as with the top Riojas, where its flavours seem to harmonise perfectly with both French and American oak, producing rich, powerful and concentrated wines that can be exceptionally long-lived. Given the many qualities of this grape variety, it is therefore no wonder that it has also gained popularity outside the Iberian Peninsula. The vineyard area in Argentina, for example, now covers about 6,200 hectares and in Australia about 700 hectares. Wonderful Australian wines from the Tempranillo grape variety are produced by Mark Kirkby and Mike Hayes of Topper’s Mountain Wines in the New England wine region.