Avenue Vine

But that's changing. Imports of Spanish wines into the United States have grown from 1 million cases in 2000 to more than 3 million cases in 2005, jumping 17 percent last year alone, reported wine-industry analyst Jon Fredrikson at the recent Unified Wine & Grape Symposium in Sacramento.

"Spain is becoming sexy in the United States," remarked another conference speaker, grape and wine broker Glenn Proctor. "Tempranillo and grenache are liked by Americans," said Proctor, referring to the black grapes largely responsible for Spain's more popular and esteemed wines.

Some American winemakers not only have noticed the rising popularity of Spanish wines in the United States, but are taking steps to capitalize on it. During the Unified conclave, about 40 of them gathered in a small meeting room of the Hyatt Regency Sacramento to form a promotional group, the Tempranillo Advocates, Producers and Amigos Society, or TAPAS.

They came from California, Arizona and Oregon, and they all have or are planting small plots of tempranillo and other grape varieties identified with Spain, such as grenache and albariño.

No one apparently was from New Jersey, although the buzz in the room was that New Jersey has 250 acres of tempranillo. Not so, says Gary Pavlis, an agricultural agent with Rutgers University. At best, New Jersey has 15 acres of tempranillo, but more could be on the way. A large but shy Spanish wine company has bought substantial property in southern New Jersey and is starting to develop vineyards on the site, though more albariño than tempranillo so far has been planted, Pavlis says.

At any rate, California land devoted to tempranillo stands at 731 acres, double what it was a decade ago but still a fraction of the vineyards planted to cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir and the like.

Oregon has far less tempranillo, and much of it seems planted at Abacela Vineyards and Winery in Roseburg, where Earl Jones is cultivating nine varieties of Portuguese and Spanish grapes.

Jones believes in tempranillo so strongly that he took the initiative to form TAPAS and is the group's first president.

"Tempranillo is a great variety that's been overlooked in America," Jones says. "The Spanish have been making outstanding wines for centuries. If they can make great wine over there, why shouldn't we?"

Tempranillo isn't better known in the United States, Jones suspects, because Americans have taken their wine-drinking cues largely from the British, whose palates early on developed an affinity for the table wines of Bordeaux and Burgundy in France rather than the table wines from Spain.

Over the past 20 years, however, Spanish wines have risen in prominence among American wine collectors, so Jones and his cohorts think the time is right to alert Americans that tempranillo, albariño, grenache and other grape varieties from Spain can turn out notable wines in the United States.

But is there room in the crowded American wine cellar for Spanish varieties?

"We don't know. The answer will come in 10 years," Jones said. In the meantime, he suggested, try one of those tempranillos over there.

No organizational meeting of a wine society is complete without an opportunity to taste, and Jones and several other vintners assembled a table of tempranillos.

As a group, they were richly aromatic, with scents often seductively floral. Fruit flavors were fresh and juicy, sometimes suggestive of blackberries, sometimes cherries and sometimes plums, with currents of green tobacco leaves, white chocolate, mint and oak here and there. Structurally, they ranged from giving to firm, with the more approachable examples benefitting from a year or two of additional age, a characteristic shared by tempranillo-based wines even from Spain.

Bottom line: Tempranillo is a big, red wine best opened when rib-eye steak, prime rib, lamb stew or something similarly dark, dense and husky is heading for the table, including the meatier kinds of tapas.

Still, tempranillo advocates know they face several challenges with the variety, which, incidentally, is pronounced tem-prah-NEE-yo. Producers make just small lots of the wine. Their releases tend to be more dear than many tempranillo-based wines from Spain. And many restaurateurs and wine merchants hesitate to add largely unknown wines to their lists and shelves.

"It's a great wine in the tasting room, but wholesale is more difficult," said winemaker Chuck Hovey of Stevenot Winery in Murphys, Calaveras County. He was indicating that consumers love his tempranillos when they find them, but that's usually in the Stevenot tasting room because distributors shy from carrying relatively obscure varietals.

On the other hand, says David Ramey, the wine world could use more varieties and styles of wine.

"No one wants to drink the same thing every night," said Ramey, a Sonoma County winemaker best known for his sleek cabernet sauvignons and chardonnays during tours at wineries such as Matanzas Creek, Chalk Hill and Dominus.

He has his own winery now, Ramey Wine Cellars in Healdsburg, and while he doesn't yet make tempranillo he attended the TAPAS session because he is thinking of adding it to his portfolio.

"The challenge with tempranillo is to tame the tannins without making too light a wine," he says. "When that is done, as with the best examples from Spain, you get cabernetlike structure with a different flavor profile. It has more fruit and less cedar."

Another Sonoma County winemaker, Penny Gadd-Coster of J Wine Co., is about to release two tempranillos under her own brand, Coral Mustang Wines. She's found the varietal to be versatile with a wider range of foods than many other red wines.

"It's the perfect food wine," Gadd-Coster says of tempranillo. "It's very easy to drink. Its tannins tend to be softer than some of the cabernets out there. It has more backbone than zinfandel, but not to the extent of a cabernet or syrah."

Domestic tempranillo is only going to get better, Jones predicts. Better clones of the variety are just being released here, and as they take root, he's confident that the American taste for tempranillo also will grow.

Eventually, TAPAS likely will stage tastings to introduce Spanish varietals to a wider audience. In the meantime, consumers curious about Spanish varieties might want to be on the lookout for tempranillos being made here. In addition to Abacela, Stevenot and Coral Mustang, American tempranillo producers include R.H. Phillips, Gundlach-Bundschu, Capay Valley, Clos du Bois, Twisted Oak, Anna Maria, New Clairvaux, Wild Horse, Barreto, St. Amant, Artesa, Meeker, Bokisch, Boeger, Pagor, and Dare, the latter a label of Viader.

While many restaurants shy from Spanish varieties, that isn't the case at Sacramento's tapas bar, Tapa the World - which carries tempranillos by Abacela, Stevenot, Pagor, Bokisch and Boeger - and Aioli Bodega Española, which carries tempranillos by Abacela and Boeger.

Source: “Tempranillo is big, red - and on the rise in U.S.,” Mike Dunne, Sacramento Bee, February 22, 2006