Wines from Castile-La Mancha

The homeland of Don Quixote, that immortal sad-faced knight, is a huge high plain with gentle undulations at its edges. It is also a "sea of vines", as one illustrious visitor called it, and represents the greatest concentration of vineyards in the world.

The predominating grape variety here is the white Airen, followed by the red Cenibel --known as Tempranillo in La Rioja, whose origin is attributed to a knight called Bernard de Cîteaux, who is reputed to have brought some of the noble Burgundy variety Pinot Noir to this region.

The La Mancha plain was the winery for the Spanish Court from the 16th to the 19th century. And right up until the middle of last century, the country's finest reds and clarets were produced here.

Modern communications gave rise to a spectacular increase in production, to the detriment of the quality, although recent technological awareness in the wineries has allowed the wines to recover a large part of their former prestige.

Areas like Valdepenas, La Mancha and Almansa today produce interesting young white wines and some reds of comparable quality, at unbeatable prices.

La Mancha
To illustrate the dominance of the Castile-La Mancha region, we need only say that half Spain's vineyards are found in this Comunidad, and just under half the country's total wine production comes from La Mancha.

The region is characterised today by a positive attitude which has found expression in concern for the region's winemaking bases and in technological re-equipment of the wineries. This has meant that some very good quality wines are being produced and welcomed on the market.

Apart from the Airen grape, some varieties which were in danger of disappearing altogether have been reinstated; one example is Cencibel, of the Tempranillo family.

Valdepenas
Local history has produced an intense concentration of wineries. Valdepenas' problem has been the same as in other historic zones such as Italy's Chianti: the mixing of red with white, which reduces the wine's conservation period. Valdepenas red, because of the white grape's intervention, loses body if it comes into too much contact with the oak. The low acidity on the southern plateau and the small reserve of tannins mean that other solutions have to be found. Fortunately, a considerable increase in the planting of Cencibel, Tempranillo from La Mancha, and the ever-increasing varieties of red grape, give reason to hope that change is imminent in this famous wine-growing region in the centre of Spain.

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