The Wines of Central and Southern Spain: A Review

              The first book I bought in the Classic Wine Library series was Richard Mayson’s Port and the Douro. I used to read it in restaurants around Covent Garden and Trafalgar Square when I was preparing for the Fortified Wines paper of the WSET Diploma. It was a book I enjoyed immensely, Port being one of my favourite wines as well as the one which had provoked my worst hangover. The book is now somewhere in Italy, never to be seen again.

        Since then I have read many of the books which followed Richard Mayson’s fine work, the latest being The Wines of Central and Southern Spain by Sarah Jane Evans, a Master of Wine and an authority on Spain. I was excited to read this, for I have travelled widely in Spain and like many of the wines a lot.

        This follow-up to 2018’s The Wines of Northern Spain is divided into six sections, starting with Catalonia. The writer notes that although this region ‘sits in northern Spain, its history and character is altogether Mediterranean. Hence its presence’ in the book. I’m not particularly interested in Catalan wines, but I make an exception for Priorat, which can cast a spell on any lover of wine: a remote appellation of hills and mountains encircled by another, and loaded with old vines. The book’s back cover features an image of the village of Poboleda, revealing the majesty of the setting.

        The section on Priorat is a microcosm of the book’s strengths and weaknesses. There is plenty of useful information and some lovely prose:

        The early morning journey had taken me from Barcelona along the coast and up through the clouds, with the hilltop villages of Priorat appearing above the cloud, and the magical Montsant mountain.

        Very evocative! The general discussion of Priorat, however, is restricted to four pages, whereas ten are dedicated to notable producers making the wines. I think it should be the other way round. There’s so much to say about a place like Priorat. We read, for instance, that there are ‘12 village sub-zones’ which comprise the Vi de Vila (village wine) category, but there’s very little here about them. It’s a pity, for it’s a really fascinating subject. (Admittedly, this skewing of the text in favour of producers is common to all of the titles in the Classic Wine Library series.)

        A chapter is devoted to sparkling wine. Again, it’s not a style of wine that appeals to me, but I learned a great deal. I was also pleased to read that Sarah Jane Evans shares my feelings about Macabeo, deeming it a ‘too-often plodding’ grape. 

      I enjoyed reading about ‘the heart of Spain’ very much, for it’s an area whose wines receive scant attention in the U.K, and it reinforced my desire to go there. Places like Extremadura and Castilla-La Mancha, both part of ‘España vacía’ (empty Spain) hold a fascination for me. In the author’s words, La Mancha is ‘a remarkable landscape’, where ‘vineyards extend as far as the eye can see’.

        One of the curiosities of the wine regions in central Spain and the Levante (the focus of chapter four) is the unexpected presence of certain grapes. I learned that the aforementioned Catalan grape Macabeo, for example, is the main white grape in D.O.s like Manchuela and Utiel-Requena, and that Albariño has migrated south to feature in the latter. Indeed, the book is full of interesting facts: Picapoll Blanco is not the French grape Piquepoul, sweet Monsatrell is made in Alicante and Jumilla, and ‘a plague of spiders’ brought a halt to organic production at an estate in Ribera del Guadiana in 2017.

        In my opinion, sherry could be the greatest of all wines. Reading about it was somewhat chastening, though, for I realised that parts of my recent presentation about the wines were in fact incorrect! It filled me with a strong urge to return to Jerez, however, for the prospect of trying an Amontillado with ‘an average age of 50 years’ at Bodegas Emilio Hidalgo left me salivating.

        To sum up, The Wines of Central and Southern Spain is a very well-written work which will appeal to lovers of Spanish wine, WSET students and those planning a trip to Spain. Only one thing is missing: a chart of vintages. I will continue to rely on a rule of thumb I picked up somewhere: if the year ends in the number 3, it probably wasn’t the best vintage in Spain. Or maybe that’s Rioja.

Published in The Wine Merchant, August 2025.

The Wines of Utiel-Requena

Somewhere near Darlington, as the 'quieter coach' began to fill up with youngsters who used the word like a lot, I asked myself if the train journey south was really worth it. It ultimately took six hours and two changes to reach Kings Cross. When I arrived I hit the nearest pub and drained a bottle of Fuller's London Porter as if my life depended on it.

 

London, on a fine day in March

I'm very interested in Spanish wine, though, so the prospect of learning about Utiel-Requena, a little-known region, appealed to me. I have a number of people and businesses to thank for this enthusiasm: my uncle, for introducing me to sherry; Majestic Wine, for sending me to Rioja; Ramón Bilbao, for holding its Spanish Wine Master competition two years ago.

 

Utiel-Requena is inland from Valencia in eastern Spain. Rather incredibly, it turns out that the United Kingdom is the top export market for this D.O.'s wines. In my experience it's rare to find a customer who's heard of Jumilla, let alone Utiel-Requena. As a speaker at the tasting in London pointed out, however, a supermarket here stocks a dirt-cheap wine from the area, which no doubt goes some way to explaining this apparent anomaly. Patricia Álvarez of Coviñas, the biggest cooperative in the region, remarked that many drinkers will be 'unaware' that they are consuming a wine from this part of Spain.

 

It's somewhat more likely that wine drinkers will have heard of the grape Bobal, which accounts for about two thirds of plantings in Utiel-Requena. Still, it's not exactly a household name. Bobal is used to make reds and trendy rosados which have very little colour. The reds might be blended with Tempranillo, Garnacha or French varietals like Merlot, Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon, but it's often bottled on its own. The classic flavour of Bobal, I was told, is raspberry, and wines made from very old vines can have a liquorice character.

 

Bobal and Cabernet Sauvignon seem like odd bedfellows to me. Its thick skins give Bobal plenty of tannin, and it has a nice streak of acidity and plenty of body as well. Like Cabernet, then, it's not lacking structure, so why blend them? Tempranillo, the Spanish superstar grape, is a more logical partner because of its low acidity, and it has the advantage of being easy to grow. 

 

Given the heat and arid nature of the climate (less than 300mm of rain fell in 2024), it's a little surprising that about a quarter of the wine sold from the D.O. is white. The white grapes in Utiel-Requena benefit from elevation, with vineyards planted between about 650 and 900 metres above sea level. Aromatic whites are made from a grape called Tardana, which is indigenous to the area. Remarkably, it is the last grape to be picked at Coviñas, at the end of October or even in November. It has lovely aromas of tropical fruit and citrus.

 

The principal white grape is Macabeo. Best known for its role in Cava and white Rioja, I discovered that it is originally from the vast area of La Mancha, to the west. As Sébastien Richard of Sierra Norte observed, Macabeo is often considered to be 'quite neutral'. Some skin contact makes a big difference, he continued, resulting in more floral wines. Disappointingly, that's a tasting note I can almost never pick up, unless it's a Gewurztraminer.

 

Curiously, Albariño and Godello have migrated south from Galicia and are present in Utiel-Requena, where they seem thoroughly out of place, at least to me. Apparently, Godello suffers more than its fellow Galician varietal from the lack of rain. Albariño manages to retain its high acidity, which was also true of the Sauvignon Blancs I sampled. Chardonnay is also present, in fact it's the second most prevalent white grape. Needless to say, it's useful in the local Cavas, adding a creamy texture.

 

Utiel-Requena has some things going for it. The wines are good and shockingly cheap, and it's a hotbed of organic viticulture. It may sound laughable, but I think the main challenge it faces is not drought, but its name. Utiel-Requena really is a bit of a mouthful. That said, if Montepulciano can achieve name recognition among Brits, there's hope for this this Spanish D.O. too.