A four-day buying trip to one of Spain’s most diverse, and dynamic, wine regions makes a lasting impression on our travelling group of indies. By Graham Holter
It’s said that Navarra is a province that encapsulates Spain in miniature, ranging from its breezy, mountainous north to desert conditions in parts of the south. Its wine culture is, consequently, pretty diverse. But if there are unifying themes, they are freshness, and a value for money that can sometimes make you doubt your own maths.
Our visit to the region, courtesy of the Consejo Regulador, involved visits to 19 estates and wines from around 30 producers. Itineraries as intense as this can exhaust minds, bodies and palates, so it speaks volumes that the five merchants who made the journey returned home bleary-eyed but with a keen desire to bring Navarra to life in their shops and bars.
In the mind of the Spanish consumer, Navarra is associated with its famous rosado wines, which appear almost fluorescent red in the glass and are a winning food match, especially in the warm months. In the UK, the region isn’t weighed down by any preconceptions. It’s familiar to tourists who have experienced the hedonistic delights of Pamplona or the scenic glory of the Camino de Santiago, a medieval pilgrimage route stretching from the Pyrenees to Galicia. But the British are open-minded about Navarra’s wines.
Navarra’s proximity to the juggernaut of Rioja is a subject that can’t really be ignored. Indeed the river Ebro flows through both regions, and much of their respective vineyard areas are contiguous. One winemaker we visit even points out that the boundary line runs through one of his walls. But it’s a mistake to think of Navarra as Rioja’s junior partner.
The roble wines are easy to like and are a natural by-the-glass option
Garnacha, rather than Tempranillo, is Navarra’s stand-out red variety, making gastronomic wines with the sort of fruit/acidity ratio that so many independent wine merchants, and their customers, seem to crave. It responds well to oak, especially French, though we encounter some American over the course of our four-day visit, and even the occasional barrel bearing the Navarra stamp.
The roble style – sometimes referred to as semi-crianza – involves just a few months in oak. The wines are easy to like, especially served slightly cool, and are a natural by-the-glass option.
Many of the most memorable reds we discover are blends. The Navarra ingredient list includes Tempranillo, Graciano and Mazuelo, as well as Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. This fusion of local and international varieties can create thrilling wines that some merchants describe as a coming-together of Bordeaux and Rioja – a style that Navarra has made its own at both crianza and reserva levels. Syrah, another variety that has crossed the Pyrenees, can by itself produce intense, concentrated wines with silky black fruit. Its contribution to blends is striking.
Navarra is producing some inspired entry-level whites at ex-works prices of around €2 or €3, offering a freshness, texture and depth of flavour that often goes beyond what might be expected for that kind of money.
If Garnacha Blanca has a reputation for flabbiness, it’s a slander in Navarra, where the wines have zip as well as richness – indeed one producer tells us he ages a portion of his wine in barrel to moderate acidity and enhance mouth feel. We taste a racy example from the northern extremities of the region – what might be described as a mountain wine – which spends three months on lees. It’s brimming with notes of camomile and white flowers.
There’s some decent Sauvignon to be found, a smattering of Viognier and Viura, and Malvasia pops up in the occasional blend. But it’s Chardonnay that makes the deepest impression, especially wines that have spent time in oak, often during fermentation as well as maturation, though malolactic is not the norm. We are poured examples that have a simple, uncomplicated appeal and others that wouldn’t be embarrassed in the company of Burgundy at twice the price.
One of the advantages of visiting a wine region in the autumn is the chance to see (and hear) the juice fermenting. We taste a few cloudy tank samples of already-delicious Chardonnay that’s almost reached its final alcohol level: it seems clear that, although volumes are down, quality will be high for the 2024 vintage.
Navarra producers can appear a little self-conscious about their traditional rosado, which is renowned across Spain for its refreshing character as well as its gentle tannins. It’s made in the saignée method, with unpressed juice drawn off early in the fermentation process after enough contact with skin to impart a much darker hue than today’s rosé drinkers have come to expect, and a more robust character.
In the bottle, the wines are arrestingly red by comparison with Provence-template rosé, and to many consumers, who have not yet learned better, that will always imply sugary sweetness. So Navarra allows its winemakers to produce salmon-pink rosés if they choose, and many of these are excellent: those with some lees ageing for extra depth and texture win particular plaudits from the visiting merchants.
Yet the group develops an enduring affection for old-school rosados, despite (or perhaps because of) the hand-sell these usually require in the UK. Maybe, we suggest, the way forward in store is to market them not as rosés, but as the palest of reds. It seems a shame not to embrace such an authentic and gastronomically versatile local wine style, which risks being bullied off wine lists by far less interesting pink wines that can come from almost anywhere. At least one producer we meet has already decided that 2023’s rosado will be its last. The market, it insists, has made its choice.
Few of the vineyards are yet certified organic, but really this is a technicality
The producers we meet in Navarra share a quiet confidence about what they’re doing. There was a time, we’re told, when this wasn’t the case. Perhaps there was too much fixation on rosado; perhaps quality wasn’t quite as consistent, across all styles, as we found it to be in the autumn of 2024.
When a region has as much diversity as Navarra enjoys, it can be a mixed blessing. The story gets complicated, perhaps a little messy, and it can be hard to form a general impression of what producers are good at, and what makes them distinct from their rivals in other places.
It’s the freshness and elegance of the wines that seems to be the most common theme in the wines, and a purity of fruit that signifies healthy vines, whether they grow at the higher latitudes and more northerly parts of the region, or in the flatter, warmer south.
Few of the vineyards we visit are yet certified organic, but really this is a technicality. There’s not much disease pressure here, and producers are not keen to spray: “The more chemicals you put into the vines, the more chemicals they need,” one grower observes.
During our visit we explore lovingly-tended old vineyards where Navarra’s various varieties grow side by side, and hear stories of pre-phylloxera cultivars being nurtured back to commercial viability.
We don’t find any orange wines – perhaps the colour spectrum is already broad enough – but we are offered some clean, edgy natural wines and some electrifying pét nat. The Moscatos regularly stop us in our tracks. Not everything we come across can be labelled as Navarra, but even when producers stray beyond the classification of the DO, it seems that retaining a sense of place is always central to their ambitions.
At every level, and with every style, it’s the value for money that Navarra represents that leaves indies compiling import wish lists and eagerly exchanging business cards with producers. Even deploying the most pessimistic arithmetic, many of these wines would arrive on shelf at least £5 below better-known rivals, and in a style that consumers might prefer. Now is a very good time for independents to be discovering Navarra.
