Every so often a wine buyer has a double-take when he or she tastes a wine from an unpromising area, from a producer he has never heard of, his expectations low, his interest, frankly somewhat modest, and then, bang, it immediately becomes clear that he is in the presence of something a little bit special. These moments are, alas, relatively rare, therefore all the more cherished when they occur. Our intrepid Spanish buyer certainly did not have great expectations from the quixotic bad lands of the Central Meseta, but he was wrong!

Located an hour or so to the South East of Madrid, Torre de Barreda is situated on the hot flat and in all honesty somewhat unpromising planes of Castille. Father and son, both rather confusingly called Juan de la Barreda, have however fashioned a wonderful wine, from old vine Tempranillo, known as Cencibel down here.

The grapes are grown traditionally ‘en vasco’ then vinified even more traditionally in ‘tinaja’ epoxy resin-lined terracotta vessels. The result has, unsurprisingly, bags of personality and individuality, but rather more surprisingly elegance and a rather sophisticated structure.