Ribera del Duero: una frontera en movimiento para los vinos de España

Ribera del Duero: A Shifting Frontier for Spanish Wine 

BY JOAQUÍN HIDALGO | NOVEMBER 16, 2023

At seven in the morning, in the middle of the harvest, the small bar Titillo de Roa is packed with locals. Some are vineyard owners holding forth with Fernando, on the other side of the bar running the coffee machine, about the likely price of grapes this year, how much the rain will delay the harvest, their potential yields or their trouble getting the whites to just the right point of ripeness. Some are migrant workers here for said harvest, drinking coffee as they chat in an unidentified Balkan language. One taciturn regular slots his last coin into a fruit machine, puffing on a cigarette. It’s not clear whether it’s his first smoke of the morning or the last before he goes to bed.

Roa is a small town in the Burgos municipality nestled in the heart of Ribera del Duero. In the center of the picture, you can see the modern building of the Consejo Regulador with its distinctive circular windows.

Roa is a village in the heart of the Ribera del Duero, on the high mesa of Castilla y León. The bar is the only place open at sunrise. This could be any of the villages around here, from Pesquera to San Esteban de Gormaz. I’m confident that each has its Titillo, although there may be more in the larger towns like Aranda de Duero. My trip to Ribera began here, in Roa, witnessing an intimate scene in the life of a village where plenty of empty lots are for sale, and the municipal gym bears the same name as the largest bar: La Cava. It’s a delicious stroke of Spanish humor.

Roa is also home to the Regulatory Council of Ribera del Duero, which everyone here loves and hates in equal measure, as is often true of the authorities. The DO, established in 1982, has managed to put Ribera on the global wine map. It boasts 27,000 hectares under vine, spans extremely varied soil types and has just as much variation in the size of the producers. Its accomplishments are not to be sniffed at. Judging from my conversations with producers, everyone claims to create the wines that represent the DO best.

In the lowest parts of Roa, the Duero River, which flows languidly between tree-lined banks, is a critical factor in these debates, forever reminding us of its role as a historical frontier. A frontier that reinforces the value of a region and what its wines represent: flowing ceaselessly on, past plenty of tradition, with just as much innovation, new investments from recent arrivals and others from further inland, high-tides and low ebbs. It’s an area continuously reinventing itself. In short, just what one expects from a frontier.

That became obvious after spending a week there, breakfasting in bars like the one in Roa, eating lamb chops al sarmiento and various takes on jamón and bacon, traveling from one end of Ribera to the other, from village to village, winery to winery and tasting the more than 300 wines that make up this report. It was the first time I’d spent so long in a Spanish region, and it set my mind ablaze. Among several concepts, the idea of the frontier is the one I keep coming back to. So, let’s start there.         

Limestone soils are common in the Ribera del Duero plateaus, named there as “Los paramos”. Pictured are the San Isidro Ravine vineyards owned by Emilio Moro.

Peak Tempranillo

The Ribera del Duero stretches 80 miles along the Duero River, between El Burgo de Osma to the east and Quintanilla de Onésimo to the west, crossing three provinces: Soria, Burgos and Valladolid. Throughout history, the river on the Iberian peninsula has served as a natural boundary for various invaders. It delineated territories for the Goths, Muslims and, during the Middle Ages, the resurgence of Christianity. Today, it plays the same role for wine. This part of Spain is one of the highest wine-producing regions in the country, with some vineyards reaching 3,200 feet above sea level. That is the climatic limit for a variety such as Tempranillo, also known here as Tinta del país or Tinta fina. At 41º of Latitude North, a variety with a mid to long growth cycle won’t get ripe any higher. This is the first frontier for the region’s wine: most producers are located in the more comfortable, temperate lowlands, while others play it closer to the bone up on the moors, where the climate is harsher.

In Ribera del Duero, altitude and the precise origins of the grapes are a serious business. When producers talk about their vineyards, they mention the height or the closest village. This information is not apparent if one follows the DO alone. The other significant piece of info is the age of the vineyard, as is true wherever there are old vineyards around. The style becomes remarkably distinctive in places where altitude and age come together, such as the medieval Valle de Atauta in the Province of Soria or the up-and-coming Fuentenebro in Burgos. This is true, for instance, of the 2021 Dominio de Es La Mata and the 2018 Dominio de Atauta La Mala from Valle de Atauta, and the 2021 Milsetentayseis and the 2019 Pago del Cielo from Fuentebro.

Most of the vineyards in Ribera del Duero are planted between 2,400 and 2,800 feet above sea level. This means that they fall within the same temperature range. However, the soil types generally land in one of two entirely different categories: the reddish, ferrous clay of Roa or La Horra, and the whiter calcareous soils that abound up on the paramo moors. You can guess the soil type from the altitude with a few anomalies. A relief map would show that the general rule is that the higher the soil, the richer in lime, and the lower, the more clay. But some exceptions confirm the rule: pockets of calcareous clay loam, such as those that made the Vega Sicilia vineyard famous, can be found in some hillsides that mix both.