Six red wines from Extremadura, competitive and with the seal of great winegrowers

The Denomination of Origin of wine in Extremadura is named after a river, Ribera del Guadiana, and is home to just over 50% of the Extremaduran vineyard surface by unifying the wine-growing areas of Tierra de Barros, Ribera Baja, Ribera Alta, Matanegra, in Badajoz;

Cañamero and Montánchez, in Cáceres.

Unique, complex and large, although not always great despite the push given by the Regulatory Council to the take-off of quality wines.

The truth is that the results are not yet up to par with its possibilities.

There are still few wineries that produce wines, mainly red, comparable to the best in other Spanish wine-growing areas.

And nothing is easy in this hard and extreme land, an arid and poor gleba that, according to data from the Spanish Wine Interprofessional, has some 79,750 hectares of vineyards (41,559 registered in the Designation of Origin), the majority located in Badajoz (close to 96%), which makes Extremadura the second autonomous community with the largest extension of vineyards and the seventh national producer with 3,300,000 hectoliters.

To all this we must add the heavy slab of viticulture based on the predominance of the white varietal and bulk winemaking, a large part destined to be burned.

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Another difficulty is the dominance of the cooperatives that produce almost 80% of the wine, which is not an incentive for maximum quality.

Of course there are exceptions, such as the paradigmatic case of the Cooperativa de San Marcos, in Almendralejo, a sleeping giant until it began to produce some wines of surprising level, such as Campobarro.

The situation began to change at the end of the 70s, thanks to the push of winemakers like Marcelino Díaz.

The first competitive wines are due to him, such as Lar de Barros, an example of the future.

He began a profound conversion of the vineyard towards red, incorporating quality red varietals: first Tempranillo, then Cabernet Sauvignon.

Then syrah and merlot would arrive.

A task that was later joined by other winemakers, such as Alfonso Schlegel, whose father was Swiss and whose mother was from Extremadura, with his Viña Extremeña;

Ruiz Torres in Cañamero, and Fernando Toribio, one of the promoters of Pago de los Balancines;

Alfonso Álvarez de Toledo, defender of transhumance with horse grazing, brought in the Bordeaux winemaker Dominique Roujou de Boubée to make his red Marqués de Valdueza.

A list that includes Catalina Arroyo, Martínez Payva, or Antonio Medina, guru of the Matanegra wine region and his Pitarra del Abuelo, a relic of a past without a future;

without forgetting the Catalan Joan Milá, a brilliant creator of illustrious rosés and reds, who came to these lands to make the convincing Viña Jara.

It is worth remembering them when new winegrowers, winemakers and oenologists are attracting attention today with their excellent productions, the watchword of the best viticulture and oenology in Extremadura.

These six red wines show the way to conquer new markets and consumers.

HARAGAN 2018

SPEECH #25 2019

BURNT PALACE LA RAYA 2020

MOTHER OF WATER 2021

EBURUS 2020

THEODOSIUS 2019

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