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WINE

Spain becomes world’s biggest wine producer

In their fields of vines in deepest Spain, the winemakers at the Jesús del Perdón cooperative smiled last August: the blend of rain and sun promised a bumper grape crop. They just didn't realize how big it would be.

Spain becomes world's biggest wine producer
People harvest grapes at a vineyard of the winery "Raul Calvo" near Burgos in October 2013, a year which saw Spain become the world's biggest wine producer. Photo: Cesar Manso/AFP

The massive crop vaulted Spain to the world's biggest wine producer, forcing its vintners to compete abroad in a tough market to sell off the surplus.

Spain overall produced 50 million hectolitres (6.7 billion bottles) of wine in 2013, a 41 percent surge from 2012, the Spanish agriculture ministry says.

The ministry's figure for Spanish production exceeds the estimates from the Italian and French wine industries for their own production — 47 million and 42 million hectolitres respectively.

The definitive production figures from the International Organisation of Wine and Vine are published in May. But if confirmed, they would give Spain another industry to look to for exports to build a lasting recovery from the burst property bubble that has hobbled the economy since 2008.

Even Rafael del Rey, director of the Spanish Wine Market Observatory, admitted he found it "most surprising" that Spain leapt ahead to become the top wine producer in the world in 2013.

While weather helped — last summer the country enjoyed the usual sunny weather plus enough rain to really water the vines — the rise in Spanish production is also the result of a drive to increase productivity.

"We have spent many years investing in improving the vineyards", said del Rey.

Twenty five years ago, Spanish vineyards had average yield of 17 hectolitres per hectare — "very low", said Roca. But in recent years the yield has reached about 50 hectolitres per hectare.

Older, less productive vines have been torn up and vineyards made more efficient by replacing handpicking with machines where possible.

"The vineyards' productivity has improved noticeably," del Rey said.

 A euro a bottle 

But one problem for winemakers is that Spanish drinkers, who generally prefer a cold beer on their sunny terraces, are not keeping pace with the surge.

"Apart from Norway, Spain is the country with the lowest wine consumption per capita in Europe," said Pau Roca, secretary general of the Spanish Wine Federation.

While just eight years ago, wine made in Spain was mostly drunk there, according to del Rey, now it is mostly exported.

"In the past two years, Spain has been exporting more than double the amount of wine it consumes," he said.

The experience of the Jesús del Perdón cooperative, nestled in the Castile-La Mancha region whose windmills and castles are the setting for Miguel de Cervantes's classic novel "Don Quixote", is typical.

The group of 682 producers in the central Spanish region exported just 20 percent of its output a decade ago. Now 86 percent goes abroad.

Exporting is not always an easy option for vineyards, however.    

While Castile-La Mancha accounts for over half of the country's wine production, the region's producers must fight to distinguish themselves from better-known names in Spanish wine such as La Rioja and Cava.

"Unfortunately, wine from our region is still not sufficiently appreciated, especially in the foreign market," said the cooperative's viticulturist, Jorge Martinez.

And competition at the lower end of the market is fierce.   

Spanish wine generally sells for half the price of French and the vintners of Castile-La Mancha have to keep their prices especially low.

Martinez said the range of 11 bottles the cooperative produces under its own brand sell for between one and six euros ($8.30) per bottle.

While growing output and need to export pose challenges for Spanish vineyards, it is an opportunity for the government which is counting on exports to drive economic recovery.

With the economy having contracted more than five percent since the property bubble burst in 2008, Spanish firms have been looking abroad for sales and the country's exports hit a record high last year.

The government expects the economy will grow by 1.0 percent this year, after having contracted in four out of the past five years.

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FOOD AND DRINK

Why are Spain’s Riojas often not considered fine wines?

It's one of Spain's most famous tipples, and yet there are a number of reasons why Rioja wines are widely respected but not always considered fine wines by international experts and the general public.

Why are Spain's Riojas often not considered fine wines?

Spanish Riojas are loved across Spain and around the world by wine lovers. They are known for being medium to full-bodied, with a strong structure and tannins, and are often described as tasting like berries or plums.

One thing Riojas generally aren’t generally considered, however, are fine wines in the way that other wines are.

Sure, there are some particularly fantastic and award-winning Rioja vintages that are considered world class, but generally speaking Rioja is viewed as a bit of a bargain: good quality wine but not such high quality that it becomes unaffordable.

So what is a fine wine in the first place? There isn’t an exact science but they tend to be defined as a category that represents the highest quality producers from a wine-growing region, where the highest level of winemaking and viticultural standards are implemented, and quality over quantity is prioritised. And as you might have guessed, it’s wine critics who often have the final say on which fines are fine. 

Riojas’ good value for money

According to wine experts at Enologique, in the wine world (and perhaps in the wine-glugging public imagination too), Rioja is trapped in the ‘good value’ category, meaning it is generally perceived as middle of the road, cost effective, and neither awful nor amazing.

BBC wine expert Victoria Moore sums it up nicely: “One piece of good news for those who love Rioja is that it is one of the wines that supermarkets do best. You can find excellent examples of own-label Rioja just about anywhere you might shop.”

Riojas are seen as good value for money, something that (for better or worse) prevents it being considered among the more prestigious wines by some people.

READ ALSO: Ten facts you probably didn’t know about Spanish wine

High production

Wine critic Tim Atkin argues that one reason Riojas aren’t quite viewed as in the top tier of wines is the fact that Spain’s La Rioja region makes so much vino, up to 300 million litres a year on average.

In Atkin’s words, “there’s always an unspoken fear that the mass-market wines won’t sell, even if the prices are low.”

Of the roughly 300 million litres of wine produced in La Rioja annually, up to 90 percent of it is red and the remaining 10 percent is white or rosé.

Different Riojas

Part of the explanation could also be the size of La Rioja itself and the variety of wines it produces, as although they are all marketed and sold as one type of wine, wines produced there tend to differ from one another than the best-known fine wines from France and Italy.

Rioja enjoys a mixture of Atlantic, Continental and Mediterranean climates with hot summers and cold winters with relatively high rainfall — good conditions for growing grapes that produce quality wines, but with quite a lot of variety.

The four main classifications of Riojas are Genérico, Crianza, Reserva, and Gran Reserva.

The general consensus is that Rioja business bosses favour quantity over quality for economic reasons. (Photo by CESAR MANSO / AFP)
 

Soil studies 

Another ‘black mark’ against Riojas when it comes to fine wines is, Atkin says, that the region would be taken more seriously if it published soil studies.

Despite being drank around the world, there is no authoritative report on Riojas soils, something many other wine producing regions in France and Italy do.

Business monopolies

One more reason Riojas are loved by many but not really considered fine wines is due to the business model: vested interests in the wine industry, namely the companies that make up the so-called ‘Grupo Rioja’, an association of influential and established bodegas that sells around three quarters of all Rioja wine. 

Atkin argues these groups have little interest in changing their business models because, in his words, “flogging large quantities of cheap wine at small but profitable margins suits them fine.” 

If someone wanted to try and recalibrate the production model in the region, or try and market Riojas as fine wines, they’d likely come up against the might of these established monopolies.

Wine politics

As with many things in Spain, politics (and regional identity) could also play a role. As the region is quite large, Rioja’s soils are varied. Yet despite that, most of the top wines come from the north and northwest of the region, especially from Sonsierra.

Atkins says that most of Rioja’s best wine growing areas are north of the River Ebro. As such, many of these high-quality vineyards are in the Alavesa subregion, which is not part of La Rioja region but actually part of the Basque Country.

According to wine website Decanter, there are 63,593 hectares of vineyards in the La Rioja wine making region, divided as follows: La Rioja (43,885 ha), Alava (12,934 ha) and Navarre (6,774 ha).

In recent years, wine rivalry between the Basque province of Álava and La Rioja has threatened to upend the Rioja wine world. Due to the internal politics, some Basque growers could break off from the Rioja name and brand and instead produce and label their own wines as Viñedos de Álava.

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