According to a recent report by Granconsumo.tv, the Basque Country and Andalucía have earned the highest growth rates in wine exports from Spain during the first quarter of 2016. The Basque Country experienced the biggest growth in sales ( 4.7 million euros) and Andalucía in production (1.4 million liters). This phenomenon is interesting because overall wine exports in the Spanish regions have declined in both sales and volume due to steep price increases. Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura, Valencia, and Murcia have all experienced a fall in sales and production. According to the report, the strategy to focus on added value has made the products of Basque Country and Navarre more competitive, hence mitigating the impact of price upsurge. Basque economy, Basque in the news, Basque Wine Two Designers Unite the Basque Country BANDtzaldia… a new initiative from Aiko © 2017 Basque Books and More Blog Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑Seven Enchanting Wine Regions

Discover the exciting world of Spanish wines: an industry booming with unprecedented quality, diversity and value. Explore our wine regions, styles of wine and detailed maps of the unique geography, climate and soil. Taste our grapes with names like Albariño, Tempranillo and Verdejo. Robust reds or crisp whites, refreshing rosés, sparkling cavas or luxe sherries – you’ll find plenty to choose from along with food parings, and tasting notes. Spanish wines are aged at the winery so they’re ready to drink right now! The Female Winemakers of Parés Baltà 2017’s Number One Travel Destination: Spain The Magnificent White Wines Of Spain The Dawn Of High-End Cava Drinking Down The Duero River Wine Enthusiast Names Canary Islands one of 2017’s...The requested URL /book.php?isbn=9780520269217 was not found on this server.Sign up for our Newsletter! Wine & gourmet travel News, views & reviews on wine Enter your email to get it:

Make your friends happy!Share & Like this! Time to book a wine tour? Travel on a wine tour with us to Bordeaux, Champagne, Douro, Tuscany, Piedmont, South Africa, Chile-Argentina, and much more... We know more about wine — and about organising exceptional wine tours — and will give you a better, more extraordinary wine and gourmet experience. Book your wine tour here with BKWine Tours. best wine kits in canadaOne of the more compelling wine stories of recent decades has been Spain’s almost miraculous evolution from a producer of oceans of mediocre commercial wine into a source of some of the most exciting, original and sought-after wines in the world.best wine for seafood Change was a long time coming. top ten wines to drink before you die

Grapes first appeared in Spain around 1100 B.C., probably grown by Phoenicians near what is now Cádiz. The arrival of the non-drinking Moors in the eighth century A.D. put a damper on the wine trade that lasted 700 years. Not until the 1490s, with the expulsion of the Moors, did business begin to pick up again. Spanish explorers planted Spanish vines throughout the New World, but only in the 19th century did Spanish wines begin to move, hesitantly, into modern times.best red wine 2008 When phylloxera destroyed the French vineyards in the 1860s and ’70s, many Bordeaux winemakers moved south. best budget red wine 2015 ukThey brought with them their vines, their winemaking skills and the Bordeaux bottle. best wine cookie recipeA century later, in the 1970s and ’80s, Spain decided to join the contemporary viniculture world, and Spanish wines began to improve.

Suddenly, wine regions unknown, even within Spain, a few years earlier — the Rioja, of course, and the Penedès region in Catalonia, but also Ribera del Duero, Priorat, Navarra and Toro, and even the Rias Baixas region of Galicia in northwestern Spain — began to capture the attention of wine lovers worldwide. As late as the 1980s, most Spanish wines were over-sulfured to combat spoilage, not always successfully. Within a decade that practice had ended, even in the cooperatives that still sell inexpensive bulk wine all over Europe. Grenache, called garnacha in Spain, is the country’s most widely planted grape but hardly its best. That honor goes to tempranillo, the principal grape of the Rioja, the Ribera del Duero, Penedès and Priorat. Vega Sicilia, long considered Spain’s greatest red wine, comes from Ribera del Duero and is made principally from the tinta del país grape and about 20 percent cabernet sauvignon. Tinta del país was once thought to be a separate variety;

today it is known to be tempranillo. While Vega Sicilia has maintained the standard it set in the mid-19th century, it now has some serious competition. For several decades, Priorat, which is part of the Penedès, has been producing wines the envy of winemakers everywhere. Wines from Alvaro Palacios and the Clos Erasmus, to name two producers, are the equal of anything Bordeaux or Burgundy can produce. In the Ribera del Duero, Peter Sissek at the Dominio de Pingus has produced intense red wines that go for $400 a bottle and more. At the other end of the price scale, Marques de Caceres Rioja is under $10; Torres Gran Coronas Reserva is under $20. Sherry, still Spain’s best-known wine, is made from palomino and Pedro Ximénez grapes. Recently, the country’s once embarrassing white table wines have taken on a new life. The reasons: the Rias Baixas region, along with a once little-known grape, the albariño. The wine is dry, fruity and fresh, with lively acidity. And then there is Cava, Spain’s widely popular sparkling wine, made mostly from the parellada grape, along with macabeo, riesling and muscat.