Spanish red wines - quiet revolution continues!

What is it about Spanish wines that makes us so cautious?

As much as we love our fruity "New World" wines, all that ripe and jammy flavour can be a bit over the top for the dinner table... but somehow Spain's always interesting and often uncompromising alternatives get lost in the shuffle.

Historically, Spanish wines have tended to fall into two general categories - rough, rugged and affordable, often rustic, hands-off and entirely natural open-vat peasant-styled wines and high-toned, elegant, well-aged aristocratic wines.

Over the last 10 years introducing modern, up-to-date grape growing and winemaking techniques have refined Spain's - sometimes very unusual! - traditional wines as well as offering new wines based on more international grapes and wine styles.

This fusion of "New World" equipment and techniques into blends that add "international" grapes to the bounty of winegrapes that are uniquely Spanish is fuelling a quiet, slow revolution that is beginning to turn heads and draw attention worldwide.

Looking at "New World" techniques and "international" grapes, the leader in this price range from Spain still has to be Nuviana Tinto (+634386) $9.99. Known best for its sparkling "Cava", Codorniu & Co. planted hundreds of hectares of grapes and built an entirely new wine facility in Belver de Cinca in north-eastern Spain to produce this medium-bodied value-priced red from Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah.

In the European selection, despite the bargain pricing, simple and lip-smackingly tasty Spanish reds like Castillo de Monseran Grenache (+197806) $ 9.99 - packed with jammy ripe strawberry and soft fresh leathery vanilla flavours - are routinely overlooked in favour of French and Italian reds in the $12-$15 range.

As the aforementioned Nuviano Tinto indicates, Spanish winegrowers and winemakers are venturing outside of their traditional fascination with native Tempranillo (... the grape of Rioja) Garnacha (... France's "Grenache") and Monastrell (aka: Mourvedre) to explore both single varietal and blended reds made from "foreign" winegrapes.

Combining Monastrell and Syrah in a mouthfillingly ripe explosion of dusky black cherry and raspberry fruit flavours and currently marked-down to jump off the shelves by the case-lot Finca Luzon Jumilla (+384438) $10.99 deserves to be in your bag next time you leave your favourite wine store. Get some while it lasts at this price!

Bodegas Piqueras Almansa Valcanto Syrah (+582494) $13.99 is a sturdy, well built red - light caramel and almost sweetly toasty oak and ripe but undeniably "dry" blackberry fruit flavours are backed up by peppery tannins and refreshing acidity. We're not accustomed to Spanish Syrah but if there's meat on the table, this should be a first choice!

Centuries of geographic isolation by the Pyrenees mountains, and the geopolitical isolation of Franco's xenophobic iron rule from 1936 to 1975, left Spain to develop its modern winemaking in similar isolation. The fine Tempranillo wines of Rioja were generally acknowledged to represent the best that Spain had to offer.

Without deviating from this in principle Grupo Faustino has recently taken a leap into the modern age with Marqués de Vitoria Ecco "Organic" Rioja (+298521) $15.95. Bright berry fruit and softly seductive American oak add interest to this table-ready red with New Age aspirations.

Somewhere around the $20 price point, Spanish red wines move from excellent to completely extraordinary. Like France's Bordeaux, the elegant and aristocratic ultra-traditional Riojas can, however, be less of a bargain than the apparently countless wines from newer growing regions in the south and east.

Taking blank, boring labelling to new and nearly invisible "Terra Alta" heights Vinos Pinol Portal (+421594) $22.99 blends Cabernet Sauvignon, Garnacha, Merlot, Tempranillo, and Syrah into an exceptionally exciting red. Try a bottle of this rich red from Tarragona, now, then imagine how velvety complex it will taste in a couple of years!!!

Labelled very primitively under what might be runic hieroglyphs Celler del Roure "Les Alcusses" (+481267) $24.99 is an unusual blend that includes Monastrell, Tempranillo, Syrah, and Mando. Even for the winelover who's been everywhere and tasted everything, broodingly dark Mando - a native variety from Spain's Mediterranean Valencia - is a rich and charming mystery full of deep berry fruits with earthy mushroom undertones and those elusive hints of Spanish leather.