Spanish rosado & clarete: Panel tasting results

David Williams, Matthew Forster MW and Diana Rollan tasted 118 wines, with 2 Outstanding and 20 Highly Recommended.

Spanish rosado & clarete: Panel tasting scores

118 wines tasted

Exceptional 0

Outstanding 2

Highly recommended 20

Recommended 57

Commended 26

Fair 13

Poor 0

Entry criteria: producers and UK agents were invited to submit their current-release, still rosado (produced from red grapes following the saignée/sangrado or direct press method) or clarete (25% red grapes/must and 75% white grapes/must, blended before alcoholic fermentation) wines from any ageing category of joven, roble, crianza, reserva or gran reserva

This tasting featured one of the best wines I and my two fellow judges, Matthew Forster MW and Diana Rollan, have encountered in a Decanter panel tasting. A unanimous 97-pointer, Bodega Hacienda Lopéz de Haro’s Classica Gran Reserva Rosado 2013 is vying for a place in my personal pantheon: is this the finest Spanish rosado I’ve ever tasted? It’s certainly up there.

In a rosé winemaking world that is increasingly preoccupied with imitating the model of extremely pale, delicately flavoured wines, patented (with extraordinary recent success) by Provence, the Classica was a vivid and timely reminder.

Other styles of rosé are available – and a long tradition of making deeper-coloured, more powerfully flavoured and more robustly textured rosados is one of Spanish wine’s many strengths. And sure enough, it was wines made in this tradition that stood out and attracted our highest scores.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores from the Spanish rosado & clarete panel tasting

Spanish rosé tradition

We were less enamoured with wines that seemed to be trying to copy Provence. It’s not that these pale wines were bad per se (indeed, some were very good). It’s just that, as Rollan said while discussing one of the higher-scoring pale wines: ‘It’s a perfectly well-made wine: refreshing, fruity… But what it doesn’t have is any kind of Spanish character. The world doesn’t need more Provence-style rosés.’

And she added: ‘Spain has its own rosé tradition and it’s a shame when they just try to copy something that you find all over the world.’

Forster agreed. ‘With some exceptions, the better wines for me were true-to-type rosados, made in a more traditional full-bodied style, rather than wannabe Provence-style rosés,’ he said. ‘There were also a couple of experimental wines that really stood out, demonstrating sophisticated winemaking and a more confident, authentic approach.’

On the strength of this tasting, ‘authentic’ rosados can be found all over Spain, and while Rioja claimed the top two scores, there were high-scoring wines of real character and interest from Galicia, Navarra and various parts of Catalonia.

Varietally speaking, Garnacha was a consistent performer, but Tempranillo struggled, with many showing an awkward, green/unripe side and noticeable alcoholic heat on the finish.

See all the wines from the Spanish rosado & clarete panel tasting

Clear disparity

The scores suggest I was more enthusiastic than my fellow judges about the claretes we tasted, although we all appreciated the variety and character on offer in these white-and-red-grape co-fermentations, which varied from light reds to those that more closely resembled orange wines.

Overall, perhaps our most significant finding was the big disparity between wines from the best producers and the rest. It may be the legacy of a time when rosé was effectively a by-product of red wine production.

But there’s a sense that some producers have, in Forster’s words, ‘underestimated the technical challenges associated with this form of winemaking and are struggling to find their way’.

Great rosés may be marked by an easygoing, easy-drinking grace, but making great rosé is by no means as easy as it looks.

Spanish rosado & clarete panel tasting scores

Wines were tasted blind

The judges

David Williams is wine correspondent for The Observer, a regular contributor to Decanter on all things Spanish, and a widely published wine writer, author and competition judge.

Matthew Forster MW is an independent wine consultant and education specialist, and founder of The Wine Partnership. A former director at the Wine & Spirit Education Trust, he has a particular passion for the food and wine cultures of Spain, Portugal and South America.

Diana Rollan is group head of beverage for D&D London restaurants group. A DWWA judge for Spain, she formerly managed training and wine buying at Hakkasan Group as its UK head of wine.

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