Pioneering in Ribera del Duero

IT’S a saga fit for one of Spain’s great film directors. In the early 1960s, on a wine estate in Old Castile, the teenage son of one of the winery workers is collared by the winemakers as he walks past their offices one day. They need another taster. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know anything about wine.

In a blind tasting of 20 wines, the young man, Mariano Garcia, is the only one of the group to pick out the two wines that are identical. He is put to work in the winery and by the time he is 24, he has become chief winemaker at Vega Sicilia, a legendary bodega (winery) that once boasted Winston Churchill among its fans, and for more than 100 years was the only notable wine producer in the region.

The tale, of course, doesn’t end there. Garcia put in 30 years of stellar winemaking during which Vega Sicilia’s Tempranillo-based Bordeaux-style wines soared in value and prestige, and the region, a highland area due north of Madrid known as Ribera del Duero (for its location along the Duero River), was recognized as a Denominacion de Origen (D.O.). Then Garcia and Vega Sicilia parted ways, celebrity-divorce style.

The man whose name was so strongly linked to the rise of Ribera del Duero expanded beyond the booming region with his two proprietary wineries, the family-run Bodegas Mauro and Bodegas Maurodos. His latest project, the winery Aalto, roots him firmly back within the D.O. boundaries yet approaches winemaking there in a whole new way.

Garcia is bigger than Ribera del Duero, says Victor de la Serna, a deputy editor at the Madrid daily newspaper, El Mundo, and one of Spain’s leading wine authorities.

“Mariano is the great man of Spanish wine,” de la Serna says. “He’s the No. 1 winemaker in the country. A whole school of people have been mentored by Mariano.”

London-based wine critic Jancis Robinson says, “I’m a big admirer of Mariano’s wines and of what he has done. It was brave to set up Mauro just outside of the D.O.”

Brave? Garcia thinks not. It’s just what happens when you are early to a party. Garcia was planting vineyards and building wine projects in the region years before there was a D.O.

In 1982, Spanish officials went from village to village along the Duero River to determine which ones had enough vineyards to be declared part of a new D.O. When they got to the western part of the valley and the town of Sardon, where there were no vineyards, they declared the western limit of the D.O. to be the town before Sardon. Mauro’s vineyards were located near Tudela de Duero, just west of Sardon.

Rather than inspiring imitators, Vega Sicilia was, for decades, written off by neighboring farmers as a vanity project for its series of wealthy owners. The sleepy Duero River Valley’s other vineyards belonged to families who maintained a centuries-old tradition of basement bodegas.

But Mariano Garcia, along with a handful of other vintners including Alejandro Fernandez with his Pesquera de Duero wines, believed that the high-altitude countryside prone to late spring frosts could compete with Rioja, Spain’s reigning wine region. Still, when the Ribera del Duero D.O. was recognized, there were only eight commercial bodegas in the region.

On a late spring day, as he fingered the tender young shoots spiraling out from gnarly Tempranillo stumps, Garcia talked about how these dry-farmed vines of Tinto Fino, the local name for the indigenous grape of Ribera del Duero, are the secret to the region’s best wines.

Pruned to grow as bushes rather than vertically trellised as is common in France and the United States, vines have grapes that hang low, close to the ground under a circular canopy of leaves that protect them from the searing mid-summer heat. Bush pruning naturally limits the yield of grapes per vine, concentrating the flavor in the remaining grapes. Depriving the vines of water makes them “suffer,” said Garcia, which further concentrates the flavors.

--

A costly process

IT can take up to eight years, much longer than trellised vines, for newly planted bush-pruned vines to produce fruit fit for fine wines. And once established, bush-pruned vines require more time and effort to tend and harvest, making this a very expensive way to grow grapes.

“If you want the best wine ... “ the wiry Mariano said. His son and translator, Alberto, 32, let the phrase hang in the air.

Mariano Garcia’s empire today is concentrated around his three highly regarded wineries situated in the area historically known as Old Castile: Bodegas Mauro, in Tudela de Duero, just west of Ribera del Duero; Bodegas Maurodos, located in the Toro D.O., a burgeoning wine region a short drive south of Ribera del Duero; and Bodegas Aalto, in the Valladolid subregion of the Ribera del Duero D.O.

The vast majority of the Mauro and Maurodos vineyards are bush pruned. And for wines produced by Aalto, not only are all of the vineyards bush pruned, but they are all old vines, planted at least 40 years ago.

Most of Ribera del Duero’s newer wine projects don’t bother with bush pruning. Vintners are rushing their wines to market to cash in on the rising popularity of the region’s wines. Perhaps 20 new bodegas this year will join the 225 already in operation in the D.O., according to John Radford, author of the definitive guide to Spanish wine, “The New Spain.”

But while critics are warning that Ribera del Duero has grown too quickly, resulting in a surplus of inferior wine, this pioneer winemaker has steadily won accolades and continues to innovate.

Soon after he left Vega Sicilia in 1998, Garcia met Javier Zaccagnini, who had been an official with the Ribera del Duero D.O. With a group of investors, they created Aalto, named after a Finnish architect, Alvar Aalto, whom Zaccagnini admired as much for the spelling that would put the wines at the top of every restaurant’s list as for his buildings.

At Aalto, near the town of Quintanilla de Arriba in the Ribera del Duero D.O., an unusual philosophy is at play. Whereas wines from Garcia’s Mauro and Maurodos bodegas are terroir wines in the classic sense (Garcia hopes to express a particular part of the region with as little human hand showing as possible), Aalto wines are expressions of old-vine fruit, made with Tempranillo grapes drawn from different parts of the D.O.

--

An east-west balance

THE grapes are purchased from several vineyards, each at least 40 years old. The goal is to develop an east-west balance using the same number of grape sources in Ribera del Duero’s eastern Burgos region as in the western Valladolid region.The newest of Garcia’s ventures, Aalto boasts a sleek modern winery completed in 2004. The decision on oak aging is made individually for each of the small lot fermentations.

The definition of Aalto is old vines, bush pruning and no irrigation, Zaccagnini says. A key factor, he says, is the subtle climatic variation in Ribera del Duero. Higher elevation, cooler vineyards of the western Valladolid region produce more elegant, acidic wines with sophistication and finesse. The lower elevation, warmer eastern Burgos region of the D.O. produces more powerful, fuller-bodied wines.

Currently, most of the grapes for Aalto come from the warmer, eastern region. The partners are close to signing more leases with old-vine vineyards in the western area. “The best wines are a blend of both,” Zaccagnini says.

“I try to adapt to modern times. Now is the time to do things better, to not be so conservative,” said Garcia, who started his earlier wineries, Mauros and Maurodos, in part because he chafed under the conservative winemaking policies during his long tenure at Vega Sicilia.

The storied Vega Sicilia wines have long been cherished by collectors for their ability to age for decades without losing their liveliness. The Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Malbec with 80% Tempranillo that go into Vega Sicilia’s signature Unico wines are harvested before becoming overly ripe to guarantee an exceptionally high acidity.

The wines are aged for 10 months in oak vats before spending 10 to 16 months in new French oak barrels, then aging in used oak barrels for two to three years. Typically, the wines are released 10 years after the vintage date.

At Bodegas Mauro, launched as a sideline in 1978, Garcia now produces 300,000 bottles of wine a year -- a production level that has required constant expansion of vineyards. The wines are a blend of Tempranillo with 10% Syrah, and aged 16 months in French and American oak barrels.

The winery for Bodegas Maurodos was built in 2000. The 100% native Tempranillo grapes (called Tinto Toro in this area) that go into Maurodos’ Vina San Roman produce wines with a less supple tannic structure that require as long as two years of oak barrel aging. The bodega’s less expensive Prima wines, made with grapes from new vineyards in sandy soils, are also 100% Tinto Toro.

But Aalto, begun when Garcia was 55 years old, is the most avant-garde of his projects. And already, Aalto’s old-vine Tempranillo wine from Ribera del Duero which sells for about $100 per bottle, has been a sensation, earning top scores from American and European critics since its first vintage.

Observers are not surprised.

The great winemakers in Spain, Radford says, are vineyard people.

“Mariano is a winemaking genius. He can sniff a grape in the vineyard and know what it is going to do in the bottle.”

--

corie.brown@latimes.com

--

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Tastes of Spain

AALTO, Mauro and Maurodos wines made by Mariano Garcia are available at selected Southern California fine wine shops including K & L Wine Merchants in Hollywood, (323) 464-9463, www.klwines.com; Vendome Liquor & Wine in Studio City, (818) 766-5272, www.vendomes.com; Wally’s Wine & Spirits in Los Angeles, (310) 475-0606, wallywine.com; and the Wine House in West Los Angeles, (310) 479-3731, www.winehouse.com.

-- Corie Brown