Wines of Malaga and Granada
It must have been somewhere around Lanjarón that steam started coming out of the air conditioning vents. I had hired a small car at the airport and had driven first to Almuñécar and then, the following morning, towards Villamena in the Valle de Lecrin to visit the Vino de la Tierra (VdlT) zone of Granada. The steep, winding road, coupled with the June heat eventually proved too much for the little engine, even though is was only ten in the morning. It was a toss-up whether to swelter with the windows up, or roast with them down. It was obviously going to be a long day, but thankfully as it turned out, a rewarding one. As recently as ten years ago, Andalucía was seen as a hopeless case when it came to wines, or at least anything unfortified. Pink, red, white and sparkling, simply out of the question. Too hot, of course. While the classic fortified wines of Jerez, Montilla and Málaga (made with Palomino, Pedro Ximénez and Moscatel grapes) were among the best in the world, as soon as you planted Tempranillo or Macabeo, the sugar-levels were so high that you could not make anything except traditional, black rancios. It was in late 1999 that I went to the launch of the so-called “Millennium Sherry” made by Gónzalez Byass, and bumped into the fabled José Peñín, whose wine guide is one of Spain’s best. I asked him what, in his opinion, were the up-and-coming wine areas of Spain and he told me: “Keep an eye on La Alpujarra of Granada. Its winemakers are capable of making great wine.” And how right he was. There are two wine-producing regions in this mountainous area: Contraviesa-Alpujarra in Granada and Laujar-Alpujarra in nearby Almería. Meanwhile in neighbouring Málaga, the addition of the Serranía de Ronda subzone in 2000 to the appellation recognised that there was also potential for nonfortified wines in the highland area. The facts being that while the temperatures during the ripening season were consistently high, the night-time temperatures were often cold, giving a rest to the vine and allowing acidity and complexity to develop within the grape. Becoming the DO Malaga y Sierras de Malaga, another key factor is that at the high altitudes of bodegas, principally in the Ronda area, insect pests and fungal vine diseases are much less of a problem than they are in the lowlands. Indeed, they almost disappear altogether above 1,000 metres. History. Let us not forget, of course, that the production of good wines around Ronda had been going for many years before the new subzone came into effect. One of the first was Prince Alfonso Hohenlohe (the man who invented Marbella) at his Cortijo las Monjas, near Arriate in the early 1990s, while German Friedrich Schatz started production in 1982. But there has always been potential in these mountainous regions, right back to Roman times, and new bodegas have sprung up as the dream of producing fine wine has taken root. The grape variety regulations are generous in scope, but expect to find mostly Shiraz/Syrah, Petit-Verdot, Tempranillo and Cabernet-Sauvignon and also the local Romé thriving in vineyards at between 750 and 1,000 metres altitude. But back to my wheezing hirecar on the road to visit the Contraviesa-Alpujarra in Granada. My first stop was Bodegas Señorío de Nevada in Villamena, which is 750 metres in altitude. This is ‘lowland’ for the Contraviesa area, where the vineyards almost touch the sky, but typical of the Granada side of the mountains. The bodega was founded in 1996 by José Pérez Arco and his wife Veronika, and they grow the usual suspects - Syrah, Merlot and Cabernet-Sauvignon - as well as the local Tintilla de Granada. Most fascinating of all, and claiming to be the highest bodega in mainland Spain, is Barranco Oscuro in Cádiar. Set up by Manuel Valenzuela, the vineyard is at 1,368 metres and he grows an amazing variety of grapes, including Vigiriega, Vermentino, Sauvignon, Viognier, Chardonnay, Riesling and Moscatel for whites, and Tempranillo, Garnacha, Syrah, Cabernet-Sauvignon, Merlot and Pinot Noir for reds. To conclude, for the time being the Serranía de Ronda is a bigger area, with more bodegas and, of course, it has the DO rather than the VdlT, which is not well understood outside of Spain. However, Granada now has three VdlT zones around the province, with increasing potential and increasing interest. Production is usually small so there are no supermarket bargains to be had, but the prospect of high quality wines is very real, and excellent work is under way. In another few years we should see great things from the mountains of Andalucía. This article by John Radford first appeared in The Olive Press, eastern edition. Issue 49
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