Today a Decanter.com article caught my eye:  “Sisseck of Pingus owes success to Bordeaux,” which was a preview on an interview with the winemaker in their current issue.   More interesting was the bit at the end of the article that stated that Peter Sisseck is moving away from the very pronounced new oak influence that characterized Pingus from the beginning.  “These days I am more wary of new oak.”  This is music to my ears….could it be we are starting to move away from the excessive new oak that has characterized so many Spanish wines in the past few years?

In many wine tastings of top Spanish wines we’ve been giving over the past few years, many of our clients have complained of excess oak.  I’ve found Ribera del Duero has been the biggest transgressor…some of the wines are overwhelmed by the oak.  The Tempranillo in Ribera del Duero is the product of a more extreme climate than Rioja and the wines are correspondingly intense in fruit and tannin.  The mistake has been to think this means that the wines can take almost unlimited new oak.  The more expensive the wine, frequently the excess of oak can be worse.   Less expensive wines from the region often pair thin, hollow fruit with too much oak.

I’ve largely stopped drinking Ribera del Duero, other than for professional reasons.  The wines are often tiring to drink.  With one of my local wine tasting groups we did a tasting of ten top Ribera del Duero wines…we were literally drained and exhausted by the end…it was not enjoyable.  The class was part of a series on Spanish reds….only the Ribera del Duero day had that effect.  It is not just the excessive oak, there is often a sameness to the wines from the region that can make it quite monotonous to drink them.  Often they are in a cookie-cutter international style, a style that can please the palate, but that is lacking regional identity and personality. 

Obviously you can’t paint a whole region with the same brush and thankfully there are some great exceptions.  Also Ribera is not the only transgressor in excessive oaking….some of the up and coming regions such as Jumilla and La Mancha can also overdo it.  Even certain wineries that make modern styles of Rioja can overwhelm the elegant Rioja fruit with new oak.  I’ve even lately tasted a couple of “new style” Priorat that are over-oaked…thankfully the exception in that region. 

So hopefully these words by the maker of what many consider Spain’s top wine are signaling a new trend in Spain.  Hopefully that trend leads back to a better balance, more drinkability, and a more distinct regional character in some Spanish wines.

Here is a link to the article in Decanter:  http://www.decanter.com/news/276520.html