Ribera del Duero: Top wines to buy now

Ribera del Duero represents the contrast between wines that take a long time to be made and aged to reach their full potential, and the hectic movement of new wineries, innovative winemakers, previously unheard-of old-vine vineyards, new wine styles, ceaseless market ups and downs…

I could have proposed a list of wines that are ready to drink now, most of them made many years ago, but that would not be very practical or fair to newer wineries.

Instead I decided to start anew, creating a list from a tasting of the best wines in the region that are available in the market now, which I went about selecting from more than 150 samples I received.

For top Ribera del Duero, I keep two principles in mind. First of all, there are no miracles in this region. All great Ribera wines are the result of careful site(s) selection, mature vines, low yields, smart winemaking and deft ageing.

Messages such as ‘I do nothing, nature makes the wines’ are just fairy tales. Tinta Fina, as Tempranillo is called here, is tricky to work with; picking grapes at the optimal time is difficult. Besides, Tempranillo will not release its potential unless exposed to (sometimes very long) barrel ageing. So top Ribera can be neither very young nor cheap.

Beauty in diversity

Second, Ribera del Duero shares many features with Burgundy. It is a narrow, elongated region with distinctive terroirs along its axis. One red grape predominates all along, but its expressions are extremely diverse.

Within each sub-zone, municipalities are distinctive. Pesquera has little in common with Quintanilla; La Aguilera is quite different from Roa; and San Esteban de Gormaz is a world apart from the other sub-regions.

In addition, there are a few vineyards that are the cradle of the greatest wines only when the vines are old enough and trellised to provide low yields. Vega Sicilia – not only the region’s historic icon, but also the front-runner in terms of research – shows the way with its detailed vineyard parcellation.

Some of the wines in this selection of 20 are single-vineyard; I hope that one day they will become Ribera grand cru, or whatever the name. Others are blends of several top sites – these can be as good as the single-vineyard wines, but are more representative of the house style than a particular place.

Indeed, there is an increasing diversity of red wine styles, from blockbusters to wonders of refinement, from explosive fruit to deliciously decadent and complex developed expressions, from amazing aromatic precision to impressive concentration. None of them is intrinsically superior to the other; they are just different expressions of a region that yields beauty out of harsh climates, varied soils and lots of individual craftmanship.

So I would advise you not to look for a Ribera profile, but to enjoy its diversity.

All the selected wines are among my favourites, but not all my favourites are on the list. I had to sacrifice a few dozen wines that I could have happily recommended, in order to provide more diversity and information – the top wines of Ribera del Duero would be better represented by a 50-best list.

Pedro Ballesteros Torres MW’s top Ribera del Duero wines