Ruining a Perfect Track Record: My First Disappointment from Ribera del Duero

Undoubtedly the best wine bargains these days come from places where people speak Spanish (no, I'm not talking about Arizona and Texas). From the amazing whites made from Albariño and Verdejo in Northern Spain to the reds of Malbec in Argentina and Cabernet Sauvignon in Chile that drink like they are $50 bottles, I'm regularly amazed at the bang I get for my little buck from these spots.

With all this goodness for so little, I'm beginning to think I may be a spoiled brat. My expectation is that, if I pay $15.99 for a bottle from a Spanish-speaking country, I am going to get something pretty spectacular.

So when I went to one of my favorite local stores and heard from the head wine guy, who I talk to all the time about vino but have never sat down and tasted with, that there was a wine from the Spanish region of Ribera del Duero that was stunning, I had to try it. What did I have to lose?

I love Ribera del Duero. It's like Rioja on steroids. The wines are usually 100% Tempranillo, but unlike the calmer wines of Rioja, this region's crazy location and climate produce a ballsy, intense wine with no shortage of acid, tannin, or fruit. The wines are intense, but I love them because they are powerful in a very European way -- lots of texture, some earthiness, and layers of "other stuff" besides fruit to analyze. Like many of the wines from Europe, they are shy-er than California wines, but Ribera del Duero is no wimp.

Let's face it, you'd have to be bold and brazen to be a grapevine in Ribera del Duero. It's on a high plateau in Northwest Spain. That means it gets abundant sunshine and nice dry breezes, but also that its flat, rocky terrain gets walloped by weather. Blazing summers are followed by winters where the temperature drops to 0 on a regular basis. After the grapevines have flowered and are getting ready to make some fruit, a spring frost can come in and ruin everything. If that's not bad enough the soil types vary enormously within yards so harvest is totally inconsistent -- rather than picking rows at a time, the viticulturists may have to go back several times before getting all the ripe grapes from a vine. Infuriating for growers.

But still, there's something special here. If there wasn't I don't think people would have been making wine in Ribera del Duero for 2000 years or that the Benedictine Monks from Burgundy would have settled an outpost in the 12th century and gotten serious about wine. Nor do I think that the most expensive and sought after wines in all of Spain -- Vega Sicilia and Dominio de Pingus -- would be made here.

With a history of amazing producers and a growing number of them making incredible wines from Tempranillo, Ribera del Duero is one of Spain's best red wine regions. Its intense flavors and aromas are a great counterpoint to the Tempranillo-based, medium-bodied, spicy, dusty wines that are typical of its famous neighbor to the east, Rioja.

I was excited to find Sincero, an inexpensive wine from RdD that my wine guy was raving about. I popped it open with loads of excitement, looked at it, smelled it and was thrilled...and then...

The Wine: Sincero
Where It's From: Ribera del Duero, Spain
The Grapes: 100% Tempranillo
Vintage: 2007
Price: $15.99

Color: Typical of a wine from Ribera del Duero, this was a black purple. On the swirl it stained my glass, it was so pigmented (thick, skins on ripe grapes will make that happen). The alcohol on this one was high too -- the legs were gloppy and slow to run down the glass.

Smell: This is what I'm talkin' about! Complexity galore. It was full of scents from the "other" category, i.e., my non-fruit list. The first few things I smelled were hay, a stable, leather, and scrubby herbs (called garrigue in French, kind of like rosemary bush and earth together). There was a salted meat quality to the wine too -- almost like prosciutto or salami. It reminded me of being in Spain and enjoying lunch underneath a large hunk of drying, cured, dead animal (appetizing, huh?). There was a bit of the plum and pepper component that you'll find in most wines made from Tempranillo, but this was so much more than that and I was thrilled to drink it!

Taste: "WHY? WHY?" I would over-dramatically cry to the winemaker if I could find him or her. What happened? The wine went from this panoply of awesome to a watery, highly alcoholic plum juice. The mouthwatering acids and mouthdrying tannins overpowered any secondary flavors and scents and the high alcohol just destroyed whatever was there with a hot, burning sensation (I feel like a commercial for anti-itch cream now, BTW). Totally didn't deliver.

Drink or Down the Sink?: Maybe if I held it for another 4 years the wine would taste better, but as it is right now, it's a Down the Sink for me. What a colossal disappointment after the beautiful color and awesome smell. Even a day later when I tried it again, the problems with the wine were still there.

This is a bummer in two ways: now not only did I experience a gross wine...I also lost complete trust in my wine buddy. It's a good lesson for us all -- Just because someone knows a lot about wine doesn't mean they share your taste in it (I'll wholeheartedly admit that you may be thinking the same about me and I'm cool with that as long as you know what you like and you stick with me because you can trust my descriptions enough to know that even if I don't like it, you do!!).

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