Wines From Spain 2025. Five Personal Favourites

Wines From Spain 2025. Five Personal Favourites

One of the highlights of my wine year is always the annual Wines From Spain trade tasting, which I look forward to for weeks beforehand. That’s not least because they always ensure they visit the north of England in addition to exhibiting in London.

This year, the northern leg of Wines From Spain was in Manchester, where 167 wines from all over Spain were on show, as dynamic and diverse as ever, with plenty of discoveries.

Consequently, this article features five personal favourites from this event. To be included, the restrictions imposed on this list were that a) the wine must be available to buy in the UK, b) the producer embraces sustainability, and c) the wine has not featured on these pages before. That meant some Spanish producers seeking UK representation unfortunately missed out, but given their excellence, I’m sure they will succeed in their goal.

And for those readers who would like more than five recommendations, previous Wine From Spain highlights can be found here and here.

Without further ado, here are the chosen five. All, of course, are excellent quality and value in their categories. Representative stockists/importers and UK retail prices are included. An interactive map below shows the producer locations, with links to their websites for more details.

 

Interactive Map

The Wines

Llopart. Vi-Brant, Pet’ Nat Brut. DO Penedès, 2023. 11.5%

Let’s start with a favourite Corpinnat producer. Llopart is certified organic, and you can read more about this producer here. However, this Pet’ Nat (Pétillant Naturel) is a relatively new departure.  Vi-Brant is made with  Xarel-lo Vermell, a rare grape variety that Llopart has been keen to rescue, growing in mountainous vineyards at 375 metres. The wine is a pale rosé, derived from the grapes’ pinkish skin. This is a colour mutation of the usual white Xarel-lo grape common in Catalonia.

Initial fermentation is in a stainless steel tank with indigenous yeasts. However, the wine is chilled and bottled before the fermentation is fully complete, in a Pet’ Nat style. Hence, fermentation finishes in the bottle without added sulphur, creating bubbles, and maturation is then five months before disgorgement to remove sediment and subsequent release. Consequently, the resultant gentle fizz has just 2.5 atmospheres of pressure.

The light yellow wine is clear and without sediment, with pear and apple flavours, super-fresh acidity and a long balsamic finish. It comes in a uniquely shaped bottle closed with a crown cap, and 5,946 bottles were made.

 All About Wine, £19.79

Food

A smartly made wine for tapas and pintxos.

 

 

Bodegas Robles. Piedra Luenga Fino, DO Montilla-Moriles, 2022. 15%

The Robles family has been dedicated to producing Sherry-style wines from their 32 hectares in the Montilla-Moriles region of Andalucia since 1927.  Piedra Luenga is a certified organic dry white wine that is similar to Fino sherry in style, but with some key differences.

Firstly, it’s made with 100% Pedro Ximénez, a grape variety usually grown for its unctuous sweetness. Instead, the PX for this wine is picked early and fermented with natural yeasts until bone dry. It then develops in a solera system under flor yeast for two years. Reaching a natural 15% alcohol, it’s not fortified (unlike Fino Sherry, which, until recent rule changes, had to be fortified).

Despite not being fortified, it won the award for Best Fortified Wine and also for Best Organic Wine in the Wines From Spain Awards 2025.

There is delightful complexity, with a sultana-like nose, delicate acidity and a spicy, nutty creaminess cut through with herbs such as sage and thyme, before a long savoury, bone-dry finish.

A 50 cl bottle is £14.50 at Vintage Roots and £13.49 at Vinceremos in Leeds.

Food

Try it with Tapas and oily fish like sardines, salted almonds and olives. It’s also robust enough to pair with artichokes.

 

 

 

San Román Bodegas Y Viñedos. Prima. DO Toro, 2021. 14.5%

San Román is part of the Bodegas Mauro wine group, created by Mariano Garcia and his family. Their gravity-fed winery was created in 1997 in the rejuvenated DO Toro region of northwest Spain, where conditions are extreme-continental, with hot, dry summers and freezing winters. Organic from the start, the 140 hectares of predominantly Tinta de Toro (aka Tempranillo) and Garnacha bush vines are in Biodynamic conversion to regenerate the sandy soils.

Prima blends 85% Tinta de Toro with Garnacha and a splash of white Malvasía. The average vine age is 45 years. Harvest is manual, with sorting and destemming at the winery before each plot ferments separately. Then the new blended wine is aged for 14 months in French and US oak barrels of various ages and sizes. Mariano Garcia was once the winemaker at Vega Sicilia, and the influence shows in this expression.

Prima is a typical DO Toro wine; powerful and intense. Nevertheless, this splendid red also has elegance and balance and will age well for a decade or more. It’s best to decant it at this stage to open it up. In the glass, the wine is deep ruby with a youthful purplish rim. On the nose, dark fruits dominate, particularly blackberry, blueberry and plum. There are nuances of spices, cedar, leather and liquorice from the wood ageing. This fleshy, big boned wine has plenty of polished tannins for the long term, beautifully balanced by juicy acidity and a reprise of dark fruits. Surprisingly, the alcohol is never warm or intrusive, with some vanilla showing on a long finish.

Demonstrating incredible value for money, this is at Vinatis, £17.00, Hedonism £22.00, and Circle Wine £18.90.

Food

Food is mandatory, so for authenticity, go for Cocido madrileño, a massive winter-warming stew based on chickpeas.

 

Señorío de Rubiós. Condado tinto, DO Rías Baixas, 2022. 14%

DO Rias Baixas is known for its white wines, but there are also some excellent reds. This one is by Señorío de Rubiós, a company set up in 2003, now with 100 shareholders (mostly growers) and 95 hectares of vineyards. This is in the subzone of O Condado do Tea, inland on the River Tea, a tributary of the River Miño, and so right on the border with Portugal, where it is warmer than on the Atlantic coast. In this area, most of the vineyards are located in small plots (or minifundio), some of them of no more than 100 m² and where centenarian vines still thrive, and pergola training is the norm. This is one of the reasons why most of the viticulture is manual, using sustainable methods.

While there are white wines here, the Rubiós philosophy preserves and promotes the local reds. These are very much in the minority in DO Rias Baixas and, not surprisingly, are old varieties, often with Portuguese origins.

Condado tinto blends no less than six indigenous red grape varieties, namely Brancellao, Sousón, Espadeiro, Mencía, Caíno, and Pedral.  Hence, the ratios of the varieties in the blend can change according to vintage conditions.

There’s something incredibly wild and untamed about this wine. It’s cherry red, with some floral notes and red berries on the nose. On the plate, there’s mouthwatering fresh acidity, light tannins, a reprise of red fruits, and no lack of power, yet it feels light and elegant too.

Ultracomida. £14.95

Food

Food-wise, this deserves something authentically Galician, so try Lacon con Grelos.

 

 

 

Barbadillo. Obispo Gascón, Palo Cortado VORS 30 y.o. DO Jerez-Xérès-Sherry. NV. 22%

Barbadillo is over 200 years old. It dates from 1821 in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, DO Sherry. This sherry powerhouse is still a family business. Making sherries of reknown, they are also part of the VINYSOST sustainable wine production project alongside other famous Spanish wineries (including the likes of Torres, Martin Codax and Cordoníu Raventos).

Meanwhile, in their San Roberta Bodega lurk some very old and rare sherries, of which this is one. This Palo Cortado is from a single butt, the only survivor from an ancient Solera created over 100 years ago – a true relic of a bygone age. Furthermore, as sherry lovers will know, Palo Cortado is the rarest (and arguably the finest) style of dry sherry, combining the oxidative flavours of Oloroso with the flor biological aromas of Amontillado. (Further information on this can be found here.)

This is “En Rama” from cask to bottle without fining or filtering. Note: This is not the regular Obispo Gascon, itself an excellent Palo Cortado – instead, look for VORS on the label.

As for tasting, this is probably the greatest and most complex Palo Cortado I’ve ever tried, and it certainly can’t have many peers. Old-gold in colour, its complexity is astounding, while its intensity is almost too much to bear, with a freshness that belies its age. This is a wine you feel, and one that heightens emotions. Rather than wax lyrical and descend to phantasmagorical descriptions, I’ll say only this: when you taste it, try not to cry.

An open bottle will, in theory, last for months. My bottles (numbers 227 and 212) lasted hours. There are only 960 half-bottles.

Hedonism, £64.90

Food

Some well-known matches for Palo Cortado are nuts, blue cheeses and the likes of serrano ham or an artisanal game pie. Preferably, just take a glass and find somewhere for contemplation.

And Finally

Here you have one sparkling, one white, two red and a fortified dry wine, each from a different region. And twelve different grape varieties. If I could only pick one wine, I’d go for the Barbadillo, my Wine of the Show.

I hope you’ll try some of these Wines From Spain. Please let me know if you do! Meanwhile, I’m already looking forward to Wines from Spain 2026!