Tempranillo

True,
Spain is also home to two other important quality red wine
grapes, Garnacha and Monastrell, but these two varieties are
qualitatively more successful respectively in the
Chateauneuf-du-Pape and Bandol appellations of France.
Spain’s best known red wine appellation, Rioja, first
brought Tempranillo to the attention of the world outside
Spain. Its identity however remained hidden by the Rioja
place name and within the Rioja blend where it was combined
with significant amounts of Garnacha (Grenache) and Mazuelo
(Carignan). Tempranillo accounts for about 6O% of the vines
planted in Rioja Alta and Alavesa, but a significantly lower
share in the Rioja Baja subzone, where Garnacha is more
prevalent in volume of production if not in hectares
planted. On the heels of the notoriety of Vega Sicilia,
Spain’s most famous winery and example of a
Tempranillo-dominated wine, the Ribera del Duero appellation
has given the world a better approximation of the potential
of varietal Tempranillo wine. Despite the success that
Tempranillo has achieved in the last 2O years, it remains
largely a Spanish variety. Does it have a hope of breaking
out of the Iberian Peninsula and becoming an international
variety?

Legend has it that monks
from Burgundy first brought Tempranillo to the Rioja area
during their pilgrimages to Santiago di Campostella. The
legend implies that Tempranillo is related to Pinot Noir.
There is however no historic or scientific proof of this
connection. Whatever Tempranillo’s origins, the variety soon
spread all over north and central Spain. Among its many
other names and outposts are Ull de Llebre in the Penedes,
Tinto Fino between the cities of Valladolid and Aranda del
Duero, Tinto de Toro west of Valladolid, and Cencibel in the
Valdepenas and La Mancha areas southeast of Madrid. By the
18th century, however, Tempranillo made its first, and so
far its only, significant step outside Spanish territory. It
arrived in Portugal’s Douro Valley, where it is known to
have been planted at the wine farm Quinta de Roriz, from
where it took its Portuguese name, Tinta Roriz. The variety
became one of the many participants in the Port wine blend.
Less well known is that Tinta Roriz is the most important
variety in Barca Velha, the Douro’s most famous and historic
still wine. Tempranillo, alias Tinta Roriz, is increasingly
found in the Dao wine zone south of the Douro. It also
arrived in the Alentejo area well east of Lisbon, taking on
the name Arragonez in reference to its Spanish
heritage.

The name Tempranillo
derives from the Spanish word, “temprano”, meaning “early”.
The vine does nearly everything early – it buds and flowers
early, and ripens by as much as 2 weeks earlier than
Garnacha. Early budding makes it susceptible to frosts.
Ribera del Duero is located in a valley on top of a Spain’s
huge central plateau. Because vineyards have little cold air
drainage and lie between 7OO and 1OOO meters above sea
level, spring frost is always a risk. This frost risk was
one of the incentives that have driven investment away from
Ribera del Duero towards the less frost vulnerable Toro wine
zone to the west. Tempranillo’s other vulnerabilities
include susceptibility to wind damage, to a wide variety of
insect pests and to fungus diseases such as botrytis,
peronospera, oidium, mal d’esca and eutypiose. On the
positive side, it is a productive vine. It resists drought
well, a frequent occurrence on Spain’s central high plateau.
Because Tempranillo ripens early, it is more likely to be
harvested in the warm sunny weather that usually precedes
autumn rains and cold. Its tendency to grow upright reduces
the manual labor necessary to position shoots. In Spain, the
Tempranillo is usually trained low-to-the-ground using the
head-trained spur-pruned system in the traditional round
bush configuration. More recently farmers have used low
cordon-spur pruning employing stakes and wires.

The variety seems to give
its best results in the Ribera del Duero wine zone where
summers are short, with as few as a hundred frost-free days
a growing season, and where winters are long and very cold
and summers are short and hot and dry. Perhaps even more
important is day to night temperature variation. Summer
daytime temperatures frequently rise to 4OÅ¡C (1O4Å¡F) and
nights cool down to 2OÅ¡C (68Å¡F). The cool nights help
Tempranillo preserve its acidity. The hot days help it
ripen. Ribera del Duero Tempranillos have deeper color, more
acidity and a higher concentration of phenolic compounds
than the wines of Rioja.

One problem with
Tempranillo is the low total acidity of its musts. In Rioja,
the addition of Mazuelo, a grape with high total acidity,
helps remedy this condition. Tempranillo seeds are
relatively soft and easily broken. Aggressive extraction
during fermentation can easily allow oily, bitter flavors to
enter the wine, so more gentle maceration is necessary.
Tempranillo responds well to carbonic maceration, which
makes it successful for inexpensive fruity wines. Despite
its low acidity, Tempranillo naturally has a low oxidizing
enzyme content which makes the wine particularly resistant
to oxidation. As a result, it can mature in barrel for
periods that would turn other red wines into pallid ghosts.
Many Riojas spend well over 2 years in barrel before
bottling. Tempranillo wine regularly weighs in at modest
alcohol levels, on average 13%, a godsend in these days of
prickly-hot, head-splitting reds.

I just tasted a 1998 Clos
du Bois Alexander Valley Reserve Tempranillo that would be a
dead ringer for a red Burgundy in a blind tasting.
Tempranillo’s moderate to light garnet pigmentation can
easily be confused with Pinot Noir or perhaps with
Sangiovese. Its strawberry-cherry nose is very close to that
of Pinot Noir. Slight leather nuances, however, send the
imagination more in the direction of Sangiovese. Tempranillo
aged in oak shows spice (cloves, in particular) and tobacco
smells particularly reminiscent of Pinot Noir. Unless a
taster can identify the scent of American oak, the oak type
usually associated with Spanish wine maturation, he might
easily confuse his blind sample with red Burgundy. When
Tempranillo grapes are harvested over ripe, a frequent
occurrence in the Toro region, wine color becomes darker and
browner, the wine smells more figgy and shows thick, “sweet”
tannins.

Today, there is not much
Tempranillo planted outside the Iberian Peninsula. Near
Mendoza, the Argentines have forced “Tempranilla” vines to
produce as much as 2OO hectoliters per hectare, over 4 times
the maximum legal yield in Rioja. Hopefully, Argentina’s
rising image in the wine world will convince Argentine
producers to spare Tempranillo such hard labor. In the
United States, Tempranillo is mostly planted in California’s
Central Valley where, under the name Valdepenas, it
anonymously participates in jug wine blends. Among larger,
more established producers, Clos du Bois has for some years
made an Alexander Valley Reserve using mostly Tempranillo
and some Cabernet Sauvignon. R.H.Phillips makes an EXP
“Viaje” out of Dunnigan Hills grapes. The wine also includes
small percentages of other grapes such as Merlot, Petite
Syrah, Zinfandel, and Cabernet Sauvignon, which fill out the
Tempranillo. The wine is juicy, oaky, thick, and
sugar-nuanced on the palate. On the internet, I also found
smaller producers such as the San Pasqual Winery in San
Diego County in California. It makes Felicita, a 5O/5O
Tempranillo/Grenache blend. Verdad Wine Cellars, a Santa
Barbara County-based winery, makes a
Tempranillo/Grenache/Syrah blend from Santa Ynez Valley
grapes. Abecela winery in Oregon makes a 1OO% Tempranillo
with Umpqua Valley grapes. Half a world away, Australian
producer D’Arenberg has just released its first “The Sticks
& Stones” Tempranillo/Grenache/Souzao blend. The grapes
come from Maclaren Vale in Southeast Australia.

Tempranillo is also grown
in many experimental vineyards, both publicly and privately
owned, throughout the world. If producers deem the market
ready, they are in a good position to, within five or six
years, put Tempranillo into the international market
mainstream. I, however, have yet to taste a great
Tempranillo made outside of Spain. Recently two Spanish
Tempranillos reminded me how wonderful Tempranillo can be. A
1996 Vino Pedroso Ribera del Duero Reserva showed dark
garnet coloration with a garnet-orange rim. In the nose, a
mix of prunes, boiled cherries, oak, and leather, introduced
a mouth filled with supple textures and mature fruit smells.
Underbrush and cinders lingered in the finish. The other
wine was made from 1OO-year-old Tempranillo vines in the
Toro region. The 1998 El Albar, Excelencia, made by the
Bodegas J&F Lurton, a French owned company, was
delicious. The wine had an opague garnet color and smelled
of tobacco and super-ripe fruits. On the palate, it was
dense, rich and soft in the mouth.

New World producers could
produce wines like these. Perhaps they may not have sited
Tempranillo where there are significant enough annual and
daily temperature extremes. Or maybe they have not yet
learned how to offset Tempranillo’s weaknesses by blending
in varieties that support the variety rather than cover it.
Or they might have not yet succeeded in unlocking the
wonderful tertiary aromas through extensive barrel aging.
Whatever the reason, this very old grape is a young
debutante ready and waiting to walk out onto the world
stage.