I’ve just read a very interesting article at Today.com/food and I was a bit disappointed.

It says that in Montsant, a wine apellation region in Spain, “You can get something that tastes like a $50 bottle there for much less.“, referring to the Spanish wines in comparison to Italian or French ones.

As the same article claims, “In Montsant, you have an old winemaking tradition”, even older than Italian or French.

We are talking about the older days of Greeks & Romans: Iberians, Phoenicians and Carthaginians. There are studies that say that in Spain the wine was already being manufactured in the 6th century B.C. See, for example Benimaquia (Denia , Alicante).

Alt_Benimaquia_departamento_6

So, Why are French & Italian wines more popular (and more expensive) than Spanish wines?

It’s just a question of trends. It seems to be more cool or trendy to drink a French or an Italian wine rather than a Spanish one.

So, in my opinion, begin drinking and tasting great wines from Spain before they become so popular that you can’t afford them 😉

Cheers!

 

This is the extract of the article:

SPAIN – Montsant

Just across the French border in Catalonia lies Montsant, a region of mountainous vineyards. “In Montsant, you have an old winemaking tradition, and the microclimates and the terroir are almost exactly the same as in the Rhône Valley,” Galliani says. “They’ve had great success with Rhône varietals. You can get something that tastes like a $50 bottle there for much less.” Look for blends with the same Grenache-Carignan-Syrah blends as the Rhône and Languedoc-Roussillion wines.

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