Tend toward Tempranillos? Take a look beyond Rioja

Crianza. The difference is the wine is six years old, about three years older than almost all crianza on the shelf. It comes from the Toro appellation in Spain. Located on the Douro River about 50 kilometres from the Portuguese border, the region’s younger wines are noted for the their robust and aggressive palate.

This can be true, but if you let a wine age for a bit, the sweet inner nature of the grape becomes more apparent. Lacking the acidity of other strains of red, and with tannins tempered by age, the wine becomes surprisingly delicate.

Sabor Real positively dances with aromas of fruit and flowers. The attack on the palate is gentle, due to the lower acidity level, but the wine has real structure and you’ll certainly notice the tannins on the finish. If you like Tempranillo, this is a wine to seek out.

Infinite Rojo is a Torres wine I’ve written about in the past. The vines are grown all the way across the country, in Catalonia. The wine is significantly fruitier than Sabor Real. It’s closed with a screw top and that is a fairly predictable outcome, even though the wine is still three-plus years old. To give the wine a bit more acidity, they topped up the cepage with 15 per cent Cabernet Sauvignon, which is often the case with Spanish Tempranillo. (Douro wines depend more on the cool evenings and altitude of the appellation to provide a more delicate wine that would be overpowered by the Cabernet Sauvignon.)

Infinite’s bouquet is fruity, with a slightly sweet mid-palate and unaggressive acidity. The structure is of course apparent on the finish. If you tend to a slightly New World palate, this wine will likely appeal greatly. It’s widely distributed by the SLGA.

Tingo Pesquera is another Douro wine from Alejandro Fernadez. This is the wine for people like me who grew up on the Old World palate. The bouquet is still quite fruity, but behind that is an aroma of minerals and earth. The wine is leaner, with a dry attack and a more apparent acidity. The finish is great but the tannins are very apparent.

Wine of the week: Sabor Real 2012 $35

Other choices: Infinite Rojo 2014 $17

Tinto Pesquera Crianza 2013 $19

JAMES ROMANOW The 2012 Sabor Real is James Romanow’s wine of the week.

One of the great pleasures of wine drinking is comparing and contrasting the different wines from a region. Do you like Australian Shiraz? Which labels do you prefer and why? In my case, being of a frugal nature, I drink a lot of Spanish and...