Reviving Ancient Spanish Vineyards, Building New Traditions

Thanks, Eric, for shining the light on this amazing region and the new trend in Spain towards higher elevation site specific wines, leveraging that treasure of old vines. Most people won't know Spain is the country with 2nd highest average altitude in Europe after only Switzerland. Most of the central plain is pretty high already pushing 2500 ft.

Thank you for this article. The most interesting point is the history of what went wrong in the past. This nothing new for us here. EU but also Spaniards had warned the European wine scene explicitly not to do what Spain had done in the 80ties. This served as a classic negative example. The takeaways were - bottles, no bulk if possible, - no uniform international grapes, be local and individual, - no costly new plantations for volatile international markets leaving with the next fashion wave 3 years later, - ancient vineyards might be true assets, - best professional qualification and devotion of producers are absolutely crucial, - bio if possible - step by step, no big bang, - know your client if possible, - decent long term marketing partners, even well lead supermarkets are not the enemy. This is similar to the strategy “Commando C” is pursuing right now. It complies to recent EU principles (Helpful for aprovals and subsidiaries if needed.) In particularly intelligent revitalization of traditional agriculture structures with clear environmental impacts is very welcomed by EU. It´s eligible in most cases. The clear difference is: Many co-ops here and also in Italy were not hit so hard when they had to learn these - and their own - lessons, So many of them could achieve a turnaround to highly skilled producers who are able to play in the high class producers league beside the start-up-folks and to offer a full range of quality for reasonable prices by themselves.

Fascinating. Imported into the States? I'm thinking no, but if so, by whom?

"the garnacha, as grenache is known in Spanish" This reference always rubs me the wrong way. There is increasing consensus, based on archeological and ampelographical evidence, that it most likely originated in the region of Aragon in northern Spain. To say that garnacha is what grenache is known as in Spain, robs the grape of its geographical origins and presents it as a transplanted fruit from the always wrongly implied as more "sophisticated" France. In the mean time, I will refer to Pinot Noir as Pinot Negro.