Spain’s New Releases, Part 2: Triumphs and Travails

BY JOSH RAYNOLDS | MAY 16, 2017

After struggling with difficult weather in 2014 and 2013, producers in Spain were thrilled with a healthy crop of fruit in 2015. Early indications are that this vintage produced a bounty of top-notch wines that should provide abundant pleasure in their youth.

Spain’s 2015 white wines are ripe, fleshy and assertively perfumed, with noteworthy depth and fruit-forward character. With rare exception they are already delicious, and in fact most of them will likely show best on the young side owing to the warm, dry growing season and generally low acidity levels. That’s a double-edged sword, of course, since Spain has built its relatively recent reputation as a source for white wines on bottlings that are fresh, incisive and minerally, with those from the country’s cool Atlantic coast being the most prominent examples. Such wines can be found in vintage 2015 but they are exceptions to the rule, so readers who avoid overtly rich white wines will want to steer carefully through this ripe vintage.

On the other hand, my early look at Spain’s 2016 whites, which have begun trickling into the market, revealed wines built along more classic lines, with generally brighter acidity and lively fruit and mineral character. Of course, most of the ‘16s that I have seen so far were bottled on the young side and expressly made for consumption soon after release so I’m not ready to make a definitive overall call on this vintage until Spain’s benchmark whites are released in the fall. In the meantime, I continue to be surprised by the quality of many 2014 Spanish white wines, which a number of critics wrote off early as light and often insubstantial despite the overall small harvest. That may be true for tasters who gravitate toward concentrated, powerful white wines but fans of nerviness, tension and cut can still find fine examples from, especially, Rías Baixas right now. That said, I wouldn’t want to lose track of the ‘14s in my cellar and I suggest drinking most of them up over the coming year.

Late summer in Ribera del Duero 

A positive recent development in Spanish white wine is the decreasing number of overoaked white wines made from varieties that benefit little, if at all, from new lumber in the winemaking process. Such wines enjoyed a moment of faddish popularity a few years back but nowadays most Spanish whites that get the new oak treatment are those that are meant for extended aging, à la white Bordeaux or Burgundy, with Rioja being the most obvious example. But even in Rioja most of today’s whites are made with an eye toward freshness over richness—much less assertive oakiness.