Condado de Haza 2005, Ribera del Duero
5th July 2008
Odd region, Ribera del Duero. A plateau over 2500 feet above sea level, enduring blisteringly hot days and frosty nights, this is not the first place one would choose to grow grapes. Yet since the 1860s it has produced Spain’s most prestigious wine. Vega Sicilia is a blend of Tinto Fino - the local name for the Tempranillo grape - and Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Malbec. Recent vintages cost around $400 a bottle.
You might suppose that so renowned a wine would have encouraged a horde of local imitators, as Biondi-Santi did with Brunello di Montalcino. But there have been no Vega Sicilia copycats, and until comparatively recently the Duero valley remained a backwater. This all changed in the 1970s, thanks largely to one man, Alejandro Fernandez. His Pesquera, a 100% Tinto Fino, changed the region’s fortunes. By 1982 there were 24 bodegas in Ribera del Duero, and the region was awarded Denominación de Origen status.
Since then Señor Fernandez has extended his range. In the province of Zamora he makes a 100% Tempranillo, Dehesa La Granja. Over in La Mancha, he makes another called El Vínculo. And back in Ribera del Duero, he makes this week’s wine in the town of Condado de Haza, fifteen miles north-east of Pesquera. It too is a 100% Tinto Fino. The 2005 is rich and powerful, redolent of strawberries and cloves, with a lingering finish of cherry and vanilla. I prefer it to the Pesquera, and think it a better buy at $24 in the US, £13 in the UK.
