2001 Spain

The 2001 harvest has produced one of the greatest Spanish vintages of all time, particularly for tempranillo wines - Spain's finest indigenous red wine grape. Despite a mixed growing season afflicted by hard frost, inordinate heat, prolonged drought and potentially damaging rains, producers in La Rioja, where tempranillo is the main grape, predicted the 2001 vintage for red wines would be superior even to the exceptional 1994 vintage.