Using ParkersGuide to Find the Best Possible Wine

Life is too short for bad wine. So you’ll be pleased to know that all of the wines in our ParkersGuide have scored at least 80 points, which means they’re all pretty darn amazoid, but look at the ‘Order Results By’ feature. Now find the ‘rating’ area and select ‘highest to lowest’. Instantly, you’re delivered the handful of wines which have a legendary score of 100 Parker points. Top of the list at the time of writing is Viña El Pisón. If you ever wanted to try Tempranillo at its very best, this is it. It is superlatively balanced, with such a depth of flavour it’s like your tongue does a bunjee jump into a vat of red fruit.

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Finding the Cheapest Wines in ParkersGuide

Of course quality tends to be expensive. Unless you filter the results from ‘Low to High’, and suddenly, you see all the wines with 80+ Parker points that have the lowest prices. You’ve struck bargain territory. At the moment Protocolo Red is the cheapest bottle going at €3.25. €3.25! In most British pubs, you couldn’t even buy a pint of lager with that! Yet it has 85 Parker Points, not to mention 85 from the Wine Spectator and 87 from Guía Peñín. If you know how to use the ParkersGuide, you find some absolute steals.

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The Most Popular Wines in ParkersGuide

Ever heard of the ‘wisdom of crowds’? It’s real, and you can benefit from it too by selecting the ‘Sales’ section of the ParkersGuide. On doing so, you’ll see the wines which are the most popular with all of our customers, which tells you which bottles are genuine crowd pleasers. In the number one slot is Castillo Perelada Brut Reserva. It’s easy to see why so many have fallen for this inexpensive sparkling Cava, which also has dazzling customer reviews alongside what wine critics have to say for it.

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The Newest Wines in ParkersGuide

Some wines are meant to be drunk young. For instance, Crianza and Beaujolais are two youthful styles of wine which are best consumed as close to their year of production as possible. Filtering results by how new an arrival is ensures that you can catch this sort of wine at its freshest, and of course, see what exciting new bottles have just been released. For those reading in 2017, El Porro Verde 2016 is a great example of a fresh Verdejo, with a lovely aromatic nose and crisp acidity.

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The Golden Oldies of ParkersGuide

Of course, the best wine improves with age. Filtering results from oldest to youngest will show you those wines which have being given sufficient time to develop complexity and attain balance. With a little judicious choosing, you can find an excellently matured bottle. Our supply of Château Margaux 1964 is a classic, and an example of a cult wine, as only a few are able to say that they have sampled it.

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More About Robert Parker:

If you’re still wondering why the word of Robert Parker matters so much, read ‘Why Robert Parker is Like a Jedi Master of Wine’. The article details the career and approach of the most important figure in wine journalism of the last 50 years.

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La entrada How to Use the ParkersGuide Like a Pro se publicó primero en Blog INVINIC.

Starting at the Top of the Burgundy Map – Chablis

This region is famous for its Chardonnay. Yet remember that there’s Chablis and then there’s Chablis. The very best has ‘Grand Cru’ status, and will require you to remortgage your house. The lowest quality can be picked up in any supermarket. It’ll have trace amounts of green fruit flavours, while it may have been crudely oaked with batons rather than an actual barrel. It certainly won’t have the minerality of the Grand Cru Chablis. The best examples are complex with good acidity too. They’ll also have lemon flavours, and you won’t detect the green fruit of the poorer examples.

Next Stop – Côte de Nuits

Burgundy’s best wines are made here. To see what we mean, take a peek at the selection that we stock, which includes Domaine de la Romanée Conti. The 2001 bottle will set you back a whopping €14,900. It also has 93 points from international wine critic Robert Parker, and an intense perfume of rose blossom. In general, the area produces the most full bodied wines with the best capacity for ageing in Burgundy.

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Drop by Côte de Beaune

Here, the reds are lighter bodied. Yet it’s the white wines which are really something to write home about, and they may just be the very best in the world. The whites are made from Chardonnay. Restricted production, and optimum growing conditions mean the Grand Cru wines are very strongly flavoured. Oaking gives the wine more toasty notes than are found in Chablis too. The wines can become even more complex and full bodied by stirring the lees. Just sell the family jewels before visiting.

Take Lunch at Côte Chalonnaise

The wines may not be as high quality as those at the last two stops. Yet they are fairly close in character, and have much smaller price tags. If you’re looking for a bargain, this is the stop for you. However the wine will age faster, so you won’t be able to brag about owning them for long. The village of Mercurey is where quality peaks, if you’re looking for the very best.

Move on to Mâconnais

You’ll notice that the weather feels a touch warmer here. The landscape starts to resemble the South of France, and wine production competes with dairy farming, as the soil is good for either. If you can, try to visit the village ‘Chardonnay’ which is where the grape gets its name from. For the most part, the area produces so-so table wine. Yet there are many good examples of whites with appley or lemon and limey flavours, as well as good acidity with a slightly above medium body. Occasionally, malolactic fermentation gives the wine some creaminess. Yet if you’re looking for the good stuff, look out for the few sites with a cult following. Mâcon Villages AC or any of the named Mâcon Village ACs produce fantastic Chardonnays, and Lugny is particular gem.

End the Day with a Glass of Beaujolais

That’s good advice at any time. Yet at the bottom of Burgundy, you’ll find the famous Beaujolais region, with its juicy, fruity, young red wines. If you like summer fruit flavours but hate bitter tannins, this is your kind of region. Gamay grapes are carbonically macerated to produce a very smooth, fruity wine. Beaujolais Villages is where you’ll find the bottles with the greatest ageing potential, and to see what we’re talking about try Marcel Lapierre Morgon. Expect raspberry, cherry and even bubblegum flavours.

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More Wine to Consider:

If you’re after food choices for Burgundy wine, read ‘Chickens Should Be Afraid of Dry White Burgundy Wine’. It has some really novel suggestions too.

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La entrada Tour the Map of Burgundy with our Wine se publicó primero en Blog INVINIC.

When You Might Theoretically Need a Wine Filter

• Sulphate Crystals
  Ever left a bottle in the car during cold weather? When you came back to it, you might have noticed tiny crystals at the bottom, and panicked thinking they were glass shards or some poisonous residue. They weren’t. They were completely harmless tartrate crystals, which are often removed from wine before it gets bottled. Potassium bitartrate is a natural fruit acid produced by grapes, and without filtration, it will still be swirling around in the wine. Storing the wine somewhere like a cold cellar will make it condense into crystals.
• Skins and Lees
  These are left in the bottle so that the wine will continue to develop flavours. More colour and tannin will come from the skin, and yeasty, bready notes will come from the lees, which are the dead yeast cells from the fermentation process. Typically they will collect at the bottom. As long as you don’t shake the bottle, you’ll be able to pour glass after glass without disturbing the sediment.
• Cloudy Protein
  Normally, wine is cloudy. That’s because there are strands of protein floating around in the mixture, but as part of the enjoyment of wine is looking at it, the protein gets removed with egg white. The result is a sparkling, clear wine. It’s also less likely to spoil, but then, it won’t have as much as character.
• Grey Powder
  This is a pretty rare wine fault which has been largely eliminated through better winemaking technique. If the wine comes into contact with old iron cellar equipment, a grey powder can form in the liquid along with a bad egg smell. You could filter wine on detecting this problem. But you should definitely stop buying wine from that maker.

What You Can Do About It

For most of these faults, do nothing. Filtration just removes texture from a wine, which all part of the enjoyment. Of course, if the wine does smell bad, simply throw it away.

Yet if you really don’t want any crystals getting into your glass, or fine lees particles, there are several acceptable household solutions such as:

• Coffee filter paper
• A tea strainer
• A cheese cloth
• A fine sieve

Wines that Might Have Crystals or Lees

As mentioned, unfiltered wines taste great! Yet some are more likely to have the above particles than others, and so if you’re looking for really characterful bottles, try the below:

• Petit Bernat Tinto
  This is a red made from Syrah, Cabernet Franc and Merlot. Expect a full bodied, plummy wine with woody notes. It is totally unfiltered too. What’s more, it is a ‘green’ wine made with organic processes, and Guía Peñín gave it 84 points, which shows that for all it’s lack of filtration it’s certainly not that shabby.

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• Les Paradetes
  Here is another proudly ‘green’ wine. There isn’t even a hint of filtration or clarification about it, and frankly, that’s what allows the wine to express even more of its character. As a result, it has a pronounced aroma of luscious dark fruits.

Buy now.

If You’re Still Worried About Wine

With a little knowledge, you can spot any wine fault. Read ‘How to Spot 3 Common Wine Faults’, and be well prepared for wine problems that really matter.

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La entrada How to Save Money Making Your Own Wine Filter se publicó primero en Blog INVINIC.

The good news is that buying wedding wine doesn’t need to be a nightmare. With a little bit of guidance and some idea of what you want, it’s really nothing to worry about. We’ve got together a simple guide to buy the best wedding wine without spending a fortune.

How much wine do you need for a wedding?

The first thing you need to do is figure out exactly how much wine you need. You can make this as simple or as complicated as you like, and there are a whole lot of wedding wine calculators out there.

The simplest rule of thumb is to take the number of (adult) guests and divide it by two. The assumption is that, on average, each guest will drink half a bottle. Your grandmother may be teetotal and Uncle Ed might drink three bottles’ worth, but don’t worry – it’ll average out.

Once you’ve done this simple calculation, you’ll have a good idea of the total quantity of wedding wine you’ll need. You’ve still got choices to make, but this is a good starting point.

Sparkling wine or Champagne is always a classy touch for a toast. Don’t lump this in with your calculations above, though. To work out how much Champagne you need for a toast, take the number of guests and divide by 8. This should allow everybody enough for a respectable and toast-worthy amount!

How to choose your wedding wine

You’ve got a total figure in mind, but how does that equate into actual bottles on the table? First, you’ll need to decide on a breakdown between red, white and other styles of wine. If you want to keep it really simple, go for a 50/50 split between red and white and be done with it.

If you’re having a summer wedding in a particularly hot country, you may want to favour white wines or even add some rosé to the equation. If it’s the height of winter, offering slightly more red wine might be the best approach.

Add in the amount of sparkling wine you need, and you’ve got a wedding wine shopping list ready to go!

How to buy your wedding wine

There is more choice today than ever when it comes to buying wine for your wedding. One of the most tempting is to buy your wedding wine directly from your wedding venue.

Many wedding-friendly hotels and restaurants will be all too happy to handle the wine selection for you, but be warned: This can be expensive, and you won’t always be getting a great deal. Venues can use weddings as an opportunity to shift excessive stock, or to sell you wines at an inflated margin. Take this option if you like, but be aware that there’s a better way: Do it yourself!

Find out the venue’s corkage policy. Assuming it’s favourable, your best bet is to source your own wedding wine from a shop or online.

Buying wedding wine on a budget

Picking the best wine for a wedding can often come down to your budget. With a clear budget in mind, you can shop smart. If your budget is €10 per bottle, you probably shouldn’t be looking for quality, aged Bordeaux wine. In that price range, it’s virtually impossible to find such a thing. You can, however, find great Spanish wine from lesser-known regions within that price range. The following cheat sheet will give you an idea of the best styles of wine to look for if you’ve got a tight wine budget!

• Red wine:

  Spanish wine has some fantastic up-and-coming regions. Here, you’ll get serious quality without paying the hefty price tag that comes with some of the more famous regions. Look at Jumilla, Navarra and Penedès. Beyond Spain, countries like Chile and Argentina can be viable alternatives to France and Italy.

• White wine:

  You’ll want a dry white wine that’s young, fresh and fruity. Oaked white wines are not to everybody’s tastes, so now is probably not the time for them. Spain is your friend here once more. Rías Baixas and Rueda offer a great balance between quality and price.

• Sparkling wine:

  When you’re on a budget, Spanish sparkling wine beats Champagne every time. Cava has you covered!

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La entrada How to buy good wedding wine on a budget! se publicó primero en Blog INVINIC.

Let’s leave the winemaking to the experts, then. Inquisitive wine lovers should read on, though, as this guide will explain some of the most common and important machines that wineries use today.

From the tractor to the wine corker: Why wineries use technology

Wine is a natural product. At its essence, it’s fermented grape juice. There’s a lot more to the process of making wine, however, and thus there are many reasons why wineries make use of technological advances. Though it is fashionable to eschew as much mechanisation as possible, most wineries rely on machinery to a greater or lesser extent.

There is a lot at stake when making wine. As a seasonal, agricultural product, there is obviously a limit on the overall production at any given winery. Making wine is risky business, and any mistakes or damage done in the winery can lead to some serious losses of the overall crop.

3 important machines that wineries use

Technology can, and does, help. Whether that’s computerised temperature control during fermentation, or state-of-the-art wine corker machines and technology designed to eliminate corked wine, there’s no shortage of useful equipment.

1. Optical grape sorter

After harvest, grapes are sorted. This is traditionally done by hand, and requires teams of workers to sift through the freshly-picked grapes in search of imperfections such as rotten or unripe berries. As with any human activity, sorting by hand is open to individual error.

Some wineries have thus invested in optical sorter machines, which is usually used in conjunction with hand sorting as a type of quality control. The optical sorter uses camera technology to inspect every single grape, and is equipped to remove any berries that don’t fit the winemaker’s requirements. These are super-quick machines, and they cost a pretty penny, but they’re very effective indeed.

2. Temperature controlled fermentation vats

The grape juice needs to undergo alcoholic fermentation to make wine – otherwise it’s just grape juice! Alcoholic fermentation is where yeast converts the grape’s sugar content into alcohol content. This can be a very high-tech process, or not at all. Some natural winemakers like to leave things up to nature, and that’s OK, but their results can vary. Fluctuating temperature can lead to problems, and even outright disaster.

Many more winemakers like to use temperature control technology, then, to ensure that fermentation takes place according to plan. Temperature control technology prevents any wild fluctuations inside the fermentation vats or tanks, allowing for a smooth fermentation with little to no surprises!

3. Wine corker (or bottling line)

A tank of wine is all well and good, but it needs to get to the consumer somehow, and that’s where bottling comes in! While you can buy home wine corker kits on Google, most modern wineries will make use of a full-service wine bottling line, with wine corker included. Many large wineries have their own bottling lines on-site, while others will rent the machinery they need when they need it.

Bottling lines can be very basic or very complicated. Essentially, the machine is “fed” with empty bottles, which then enter something of a production line. The bottles are then filled with wine and pass through a wine corker to be sealed. Some machines may also have labelling and cap capabilities, though in other cases this will be done separately, potentially a lot later.

Have you ever visited a winery? Have you seen any of this equipment in action? Tell us about it!

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La entrada Ever wonder how a wine corker machine works? se publicó primero en Blog INVINIC.

Three Issues with Freezing Wine:

1. You won’t be able to taste it very well. Reducing the temperature of wine kills off the flavours and aromas in it, which need heat in order to diffuse through the air or interact with your tongue. Actually freezing a wine is only really suitable for absolutely atrocious vino.
2. Eating wine is just weird. Not many people want to crunch their way through a bottle of frozen Chardonnay. It’s much more convenient to drink it, and if your plan is to drink the melted liquid that comes off a block of frozen wine, it will be no different from refrigerated wine. You might as well just chill it, and it’ll be ready to drink from the fridge.
3. The bottle may explode. Any bottle of wine is about 87% water, which expands when frozen. Rather than neatly expanding up through the length of the bottle, the wine will press out in all directions, putting a strain on the bottle’s brittle glass sides. Unopened bottles are also pressurised. You may open your freezer one day to find glass shards all over a mass of frozen wine sludge. That means it isn’t a good way to store your prize vintages either, and this article notes how to store your wine properly or crazily.

So What’s All This I Hear About ‘Ice Wine’?

Ice wine is delicious. It’s also not frozen, but rather, it’s a liquid wine which is the product of grapes that froze on the vine and were harvested while still frigid. In fact, that’s what makes it so tasty. Much of the frozen water stays in the wine press, while the flavour molecules seep out into the maceration tanks. The result is an incredibly concentrated dessert wine, which is also very rare. The grapes need warm growing conditions, and then a shockingly cold harvest. As a result, it’s only possible to make ice wine in the Niagara region of Canada, and in special years in Germany. Grab a bottle if you see one.

Does Wine Freeze In the Vineyard?

Freezing wine is actually part of making good sparkling wine. In any bottle made through the traditional method, there will be sediment made of dead yeast cells and fine particles of grape skin. To get these out of the bottle, it’s very delicately turned upside down over a period of several months – getting just a little more vertical each day. This infuriating task is another reason it’s more fun to drink wine than to make it. Finally, when the sediment is at the cap, the neck of the bottle is frozen, and they very quickly open the bottle to remove the plug of sediment. The process means that some wine will be lost, which is why champagne bottles traditionally had foil all around the neck. It stopped people seeing that they weren’t getting a full bottle!

I Froze or Chilled My Wine and Now There are Crystals at the Bottom

Don’t panic! Those are called tartrate crystals, which are harmless, and their presence or removal does not affect the taste of your wine. They often appear in white wine which hasn’t been subject to ‘cold stabalisation’, which is just a process of removing those crystals before the wine is sold. The potassium bitartrate that causes them is an inert, natural residue of the winemaking process.

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La entrada Does Wine Freeze Even If I Put it in a Freezer? se publicó primero en Blog INVINIC.

Looking for quality and value? You’re in luck – We’ve put together a list of the world’s best value wines!

Click here to downlad the list: 15 Wines Under €15!

Why You Need the Robert Parker Collection:

Lots of things can go wrong with wine. To summarise:

• It may be too acidic or not acidic enough;
• Too sweet if you wanted something drier, or too dry if you wanted something sweeter;
• Too tannic;
• The vintner may have used cheap oak chips to give a wine oaky flavours, which can make a wine actively unpleasant;
• It may be too young to have developed good flavours;
• It might be too old, and have turned actively disgusting;
• The flavours might be too weak to be detected, unless you’re one of the people who like that sort of style;
• There might not be enough alcohol in the wine to preserve the grape’s flavours;
• There might be far more alcohol in a wine than you would have expected to support its weak flavours;
• Too many grapes may have been allowed to grow on the vines, producing diluted wine with many flavour faults;
• The bubbles in sparkling wine might be too big and harsh;
• It may have been blended badly to create an odd flavour profile;
• It might have been oaked when the variety doesn’t suit oaking;
• The grape variety might be unpleasant;
• The wine may be completely inappropriate for the food you’re trying to match it to, such as Tannat with mackerel;
• You may have a very clear idea of what you want, but the wine you’ve just tried isn’t giving that experience, however good its quality;
• Something seriously wrong might have happened at the winery, such as a dodgy producer mixing hydrochloric acid into their wine in the mistaken belief that it would improve the flavour. That has happened. People went to jail.

Thank Goodness for the Robert Parker Collection!

You can find our Robert Parker collection on the navbar on the main site under ‘Parker Guide’. At this point, you will see all the six hundred or so bottles reviewed by Robert Parker, but it gets better. Look to the right of the screen. There, you can find a banner linking through to the top rated wines which are still somehow below €20, and there’s a banner for Parker rated wines which are currently on offer. Bargain!
As you browse through the wines, look for the small grey rectangle that says ‘PA’. There, you’ll find the score which Mr Parker gave to the wine. These are rated out of a hundred, with a score of 80 being reserved for those bottles which give a good amount of enjoyment. If every wine you bought was from the list of 80+ scoring bottles, you’d never have a wine you disliked, and the page’s tasting notes usually describe the wine’s style as well. That way, you can see if it’s what you’re looking for.
Remember that you can order the results as well at the top of the search results. Bring the highest rated wines to the top, or find a good deal by ordering the wines by price. Seeing the bottles by their sales also gives an indication of what everyone else thinks too.

Why Robert Parker’s Views are Worth Listening To

Mr Parker is an internationally acclaimed wine critic. He has been critiquing wine for decades, and an you can read more about the influence of Robert Parker here.

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La entrada Love Every Bottle You Buy with the Robert Parker Collection se publicó primero en Blog INVINIC.

Why buy a wine saver?

For many of us, the idea of a wine saver may not seem necessary. If you’re in the habit of finishing off each bottle you open in one sitting, then there’s no need, right? We don’t necessarily suggest that you neck a whole bottle to yourself every night, but when shared amongst friends or loved ones over a good meal, a bottle of wine doesn’t always last very long. Perhaps you only buy half bottles of wine, or quarter bottles. Or perhaps you don’t drink wine at home.

These are all good reasons not to buy a wine saver, but surely there are some good reasons to buy one too, right? Right!

3 reasons you should buy a wine saver

It’ll all depend on your budget, of course: A wine saver can be cheap and inexpensive or it can be costly. Professional or trade style wine saver equipment can come with a large up-front cost, and may require additional purchases such as cartridges for the Coravin system. By comparison, you can pick up a cheap and cheerful wine saver in most supermarkets or wine stores. These solutions obviously aren’t as sophisticated as the high-tech systems, but they can be useful.

In any event, we’ve got three good reasons that any wine lover should invest in some sort of wine saver!

1. A wine saver can help you drink better wine. Particularly with the advent of Coravin, you can “open” or drink from a bottle of fine wine without the need to drink it all at once. If you’ve ever found yourself with a particularly fancy bottle of wine – we’re thinking along the lines of Château Ducru-Beaucaillou 2005 or Vega Sicilia Único 1987 – you may have encountered an unusual problem. Wine is made for drinking, but some wines are just too fancy to drink guilt-free. You can either spend your whole life waiting for the right birthday, wedding anniversary or graduation, or you can invest in a wine saver. With a Coravin, you can dip in and out of such wines, taking a glass here or there and enjoying it in stages without the risk of it going bad.
2. Keep your wine better for longer. This one’s a no-brainer, but it’s as good a reason as any to buy a wine saver. Even a basic supermarket model will help you keep your wine fresher for longer. Suck the air out of a bottle of white or red, seal it and stick it in the fridge and you will certainly get a few days out of this wine, if not longer. This is great if you’re the only one drinking wine, but you don’t want to drink the whole thing in one go or throw it down the sink.
3. You’re a wine professional. Maybe you’re a winemaker, or maybe you’ve got a wine bar. Investing in a wine saver, particularly something higher-end like the Coravin or Enomatic, will surely reap benefits. These wine savers allow you to offer wine by the glass, or to open rare bottles without risk of the wine going bad. Owning a wine saver is very useful for anyone that regularly participates in professional wine tasting, particularly if you are moving opened wine from one venue to another.

Do you own a wine saver? What are your top tips for keeping wine fresher for longer?

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La entrada 3 good reasons to buy a wine saver se publicó primero en Blog INVINIC.

Primitivo wine 101

Primitivo wine comes from the Primitivo grape, grown in various parts of the world but most notably in Italy, California and Croatia – albeit under different names. The grape is black-skinned, high in sugar, and is sometimes known to ripen unevenly. This can lead to raisined grapes at harvest time, sometimes imparting a raisin flavour or quality to the wine itself.

Italian Primitivo wine

Italian Primitivo wine is best known in the Puglia region. If Italy is a “boot”, Puglia is its “heel”. Perhaps unfortunately, Puglia wines have something of an image problem too. A majority of the wine produced in this region is made at the Indicazione Geografica Tipica (IGT) quality level. These wines are not necessarily bad, though rules and regulations are less stringent at this level than for wines designated as Denominazione d’Origine Controllata (DOC). Puglia’s best Primitivo wine comes from the Primitivo di Manduria DOC, so this is the one to watch out for.

What does Primitivo wine taste like?

At its best, Italian Primitivo wine from Puglia comes from old vines and thus has a very high concentration of fruit, alcohol and acidity. The top examples will have delicious, jammy fruit flavours, and will be show good balance between its flavours, alcohol and acidity. Lower quality Primitivo wine may lack this balance, and a poor example may strike you as being way too alcoholic, or taste flabby, or be too acidic. Striking a balance is key when it comes to making quality Primitivo wine, be that in Italy or elsewhere.

What other regions produce Primitivo wine?

As we mentioned in the introduction, this grape is cultivated in a number of interesting and diverse regions, but outside of Italy you’re unlikely to find it labelled as “Primitivo wine”. If you like this style but are not looking for an Italian example, your best bet is to look out for a wine that mentions “Zinfandel” on the label, and this is most likely to come from California.

Californians will never say that they make Primitivo wine, but they sure grow this grape. They just call it Zinfandel. Californian Zinfandel is best as a dry red wine, and ageworthy examples can last for half a decade or more, and age gracefully like a fine Bordeaux. A lot of Zinfandel produced here is made in a style intended for early drinking, and will show very expressive lively fruit very early on. This is a very fun style of wine, and is often recommended to be enjoyed on a hot summer’s day with BBQ food. Quite far from the Italian Primitivo wine style, there is also white Zinfandel – an inexpensive, rosé wine best known from large California-based wine brands!

Do you like Primitivo wine? Tell us about your favourites in the comments below!

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La entrada A primer on Primitivo wine se publicó primero en Blog INVINIC.

3 bargain Spanish wine regions to explore

Big names like Toro, Priorat, Rueda and Cava are popular with many wine lovers. There is good value to be had in these regions, of course, but it can sometimes be difficult to spot a bargain. With so many wines produced here, and producers all too aware of the caché held by these regional distinctions, you may find yourself paying a little over the odds. At the very least, it can be difficult to find a bargain.

The good news is that Spain is huge, and there are lots of other fantastic wine regions here whose wines are undervalued on the market. With these wines you’re virtually guaranteed to find a great quality/price ratio, and reap the added benefits of trying something new and expanding your palate!

Calatayud

The DO of Calatayud lies south of the river Ebro, in the general vicinity of bigger names like Rioja and Ribera del Duero. Garnacha, Tempranillo and Cariñena are widely planted here. The wines are generally inexpensive and everyday, but there are premium wines and they are seriously worth seeking out. A high-end Calatayud wine will offer a superb quality/price ratio when compared with a similarly priced wine from one of the more celebrated local regions.

• Try Honoro Vera Garnacha to get a sense of entry-level Calatayud. This is a powerful and full-bodied young wine that should please most palates.

• Splash out with Atteca Armas 2014, a blockbuster wine from old-vine Garnacha. Those that underestimate the potential of this grape at the high end should seriously taste this for themselves; after 18 months in French oak, this is elegant and fruity and has the potential for considerable cellar ageing.

Yecla

The Yecla DO is part of the Levante region on Spain’s Mediterranean coast, to the south of Catalunya. The history of wine here dates back to the Phoenicians, yet the region remains relatively unknown, even when compared to its humble neighbour Jumilla. Like Jumilla, the Monastrell grape is dominant here. Monastrell is often blended with international grape varieties and vinified using carbonic maceration, which contribute to a very accessible fruit-driven style of wine.

• For a keenly priced and highly enjoyable Monastrell-led blend, try Solanera 2013. There are buckets of generous fruit here, providing excellent value for money.

Montsant

Established as a DO in 2002, Montsant is located in the Tarragona region of Spain. The region is a favourite of wine magazines and critics, as it offers superb quality and makes for a more affordable alternative to Spain’s leading fine wine regions.

• A great starting point is Mas Donis Red 2012, a soft and medium-bodied blend of Garnacha and Syrah. This is a steal at this price, and hints at the quality to be had in the region.

• Moving up a little in price, Can Blau 2013 is a blend of Cariñena, Syrah and Garnacha. Fuller in body and more complex than the previous wine, Can Blau is the sort of wine you could buy by the case, guilt free in the knowledge that a wine of comparable quality from another region would cost you twice as much!

What other hidden wine regions of Spain do you like? Share your favourites with your fellow wine lovers below!

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La entrada How to explore Spanish wine on a budget se publicó primero en Blog INVINIC.