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.
