Ladies of Spain: Winemakers Are Breaking the Gender Barrier

In a profession long dominated by men and a country with a tradition of machismo, Spanish women are suddenly making a name for themselves as winemakers.

"When I started making wine 18 years ago the only job for women at the bodega was doing the paperwork," says Cristina Mantilla, 44 years old, who makes both red and white wines for ten different wineries. "Now, women are starting to wake up."

Enrollment of women in Spain's university winemaking programs has increased nearly 40% since 2000. Women are already a force to be reckoned with in northwestern Spain, in an area of Galicia called R¨ªas Baixas that is famous for its crisp, lively white wines -- and for being hospitable to new ideas. In 1990 only a few women winemakers were at work in R¨ªas Baixas; now they run over half of the region's 198 wineries.

Ms. Luca de Tena is one of several women winemakers in R¨ªas Baixas who are being heralded by international critics and, perhaps more importantly, by domestic aficionados for creating innovative white wines as they break down gender stereotypes.

Their specialty is Albariño, a popular, moderately priced white wine heavy on fruity undertones. Its adaptability to a variety of different styles makes it the perfect pairing for dishes from seafood to poultry, and also a versatile template for experimental winemaking. The women of R¨ªas Baixas have taken a grape known for producing simple, summertime table wines and made increasingly complex wines from it -- by experimenting with different soil types, using unique maceration processes and blending Albariño with other grape varietals.

"Some in the industry try to insult us by saying the Albariño is a wine only for women," says Luisa Freire Plana, a winemaker at Bodega Santiago Ruiz. "But I think it's a wine that is too complex for some men."

R¨ªas Baixas is one of the youngest Denominacions de Origen in Spain, having received the official wine quality classification in 1988. It's the only Spanish appellation that produces solely white wine. For the last two decades, enterprising young winemakers, many of them female, have used this remote stretch of rural coast where Spain meets the Atlantic as a kind of viticultural proving ground. They've also built a growing international identity for Spanish white wine. In a country known mainly for its muscular reds, like Rioja and Ribera del Duero, creating a niche for the Albariño has been a long fight for equality. And that's just for the grapes.

Why have women winemakers succeeded in R¨ªas Baixas? Some of them say it begins with the region's history of hardship and poverty. For generations, men have left Galicia to earn a living at sea, in the factories of Barcelona or abroad, leaving women to tend farms and small vineyards.

"Women had power to direct the family and the home during the absence of men," says Ms. Mantilla. "From that they achieved an importance in the society that our generation is making good use of."

Galicia, with its rough Atlantic coastline, has a wet and gray climate. Winemakers train vines to grow slowly up tall trellises to keep them clear of the damp ground and expose the grapes to more sun and drying winds.

The basic production process of Albariño wines is the same at most of the region's wineries, with grapes harvested by hand and fermented in stainless steel vats instead of oak barrels. Still, the best Albariños are distinguished by individual character and unique nose. "The aromatic character of R¨ªas Baixas wines comes from cold soaking the grape skins after they're crushed," says winemaker Luc¨ªa Carballeira, describing a technique rarely used to make other Spanish wines. "Each viticulturalist guards her maceration secrets."

Such attention to the process has given R¨ªas Baixas wines a reputation for detailed craftsmanship that is notable, considering that other wines made from the same grape, such as Portugal's Vinho Verde, are considered simple. "The winemakers of the R¨ªas Baixas have opened up the Albariño, finding surprising new aromas and developing more complex mouths," says Jordi Mallorqui, owner of a wine store in Barcelona.

Even with a growing international following, R¨ªas Baixas wineries remain mostly small-scale operations, even as much of Spain's wine industry moves toward large-scale production. (The ratio of vineyards to bodegas in R¨ªas Baixas is 33-to-1; in Rioja there are 93 growers for every one winery. Some 20 million liters of Albariño were bottled in 2006 -- double the output from 2003 but still less than 10% of Rioja's output.) Says Martin Codax viticulturalist Katia Álvarez, "We have real wines here, ones with a clear place of origin and a unique identity."

Here, a look at five of the most acclaimed female winemakers in the R¨ªas Baixas region -- and their most notable Albariños.

Cristina Mantilla

The most prolific of the R¨ªas Baixas viticulturists, Ms. Mantilla makes wines for at least ten wineries each year, including Bodegas del Palacio de Fefinanes, Maior de Mendoza, Adegas Valmiñor and Pazo San Mauro. Along with her husband, Emilio Rodriguez Canas, also a celebrated winemaker, the two constitute the region's oenological power couple.

She became interested in wine simply as an enthusiastic consumer of it. "I thought that if I learned how to make it, I would enjoy it even more," she says.

After earning a master's in viticulture in Madrid, Ms. Mantilla came to R¨ªas Baixas in 1990, starting out in a small winery. She was one of the first women on the winemaking scene in the region but found the environment in Galicia accepting even in the early days of its status as a Denominaci¨®n de Origen.

In recent years the Albariño grape has been planted in California and Australia, among other places. Ms. Mantilla also travels frequently, serving as an ambassador for R¨ªas Baixas and working to broaden the wine's base. "We have learned a lot about the grape and the fermentation and it's important to share that knowledge," she says.

Signature wine: Valmiñor, €11
A brilliant yellow Albariño from Adegas Valmiñor that is drier and less fruity than the standard bearers of the D.O. A strong fresh grape nose translates to hints of apple and balsamic on the palette with a light touch.