Structured, spicy/herbal reds

 

Descriptor: dark-fruit dominated and tend to show abundant black pepper and baking spice aromatics, pronounced smoky herbaceousness

Basic factors influencing this style:

• Varietals: Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Tempranillo
• Terroir: cool to warm climate in areas such as Tierra Estella, Valdizarbe and Ribera Alta; loamy-clay, marl, sand and limestone
• Winemaking:
  • Blends of both native and french varietals
  • These wines spend two to five years aging with at least one year in the barrel, bringing out spicy notes and dark fruit.
  • The type of oak barrels (American or French for example) also imparts notes on the wines. American oak tends to give vanilla and coconut aromas where as French oak leaves toasted almond, clove and caramel notes.

Goes well with grilled meat, roasts and casseroles 

 

These highly structured reds with big personalities often have the right stuff for long cellar-aging (i.e., quality plus high natural tannins and acidity), though our guess is that most bottles from this small but growing category do not lie unopened for very long. A handful of Navarra pioneers in the 1970s and 1980s made a bet that certain varieties that did very well across the Pyrenees in France—Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon—would also do well a few hundred kilometers south. Their guess proved to be an essay in terroir-varietal suitability that would eventually impress even the most skeptical of varietal purists. These are firm-backbone wines, typically blends anchored by one or both Bordeaux varieties but occasionally single-variety bottlings as well, with 100% Merlot wines showing particular distinction as the region matures. Though it comprises a small percentage of plantings, Syrah, too, is beginning to show great promise in Navarra’s vineyards and blends.  Wines show assertive spice and either savory, Old World-style heft or lush, New World-style extraction.