Production

No other Spanish wine region orders its wines so strictly by barrel time as Ribera del Duero. Four tiers govern how long a red wine must age before it's allowed to carry the corresponding term on the label. The Consejo Regulador oversees the whole system.

A Roble ages at least three months in barrel, whether or not fermentation took place there. A Crianza needs at least twenty-four months total, twelve of them in wood. For Reserva, it's thirty-six months total, again at least twelve of them in barrel, the rest in bottle. Strictest of all is Gran Reserva: sixty months total, at least twenty-four of them in barrel. The clock never starts before October 1 of the harvest year. For Crianza, Reserva, and Gran Reserva, it begins only once the wine actually sits in barrel.

The barrels themselves are regulated too. For Crianza, Reserva, and Gran Reserva, the oak barrels may hold no more than three hundred thirty liters. For the simpler Roble category, up to six hundred liters is allowed. Smaller barrels impart more oak character to the wine, because more surface area meets less volume.

When it comes to the wood itself, the region holds to an old preference. Vega Sicilia still builds American oak barrels in its own cooperage to this day. The estate replaces them after six years at the latest, since an older barrel gives up hardly any aroma. Pesquera, Alejandro Fernández's estate, ages its wines in a mix of American and French oak for at least eighteen months, with American oak leaning toward vanilla and coconut, French oak toward finer toasted notes and more restraint.

Before stainless-steel tanks and climate-controlled cellars existed, the underground passages of Aranda de Duero handled this job on their own. Eleven to thirteen degrees, barely fluctuating, all year round: no one back then needed to search for better aging conditions. Some estates in the region still store part of their barrels in exactly these cave cellars today, not out of nostalgia, but because the temperature there is genuinely right.