Terres dels Alforins

The Terres dels Alforins are an inland plateau in the south-west of Valencia province, spread across the municipalities of Moixent, Fontanars dels Alforins and la Font de la Figuera, right up against the Albacete and Alicante borders. Locals like to call it the Valencian Tuscany, and for once the nickname isn’t marketing: rolling hills, pine woods, stone farmhouses and vines planted at 600 and 700 metres, which is where the Mediterranean stops being a frying pan.

That altitude explains everything. By day you get the usual sun, but at night the temperature drops off a cliff and the grapes hold on to their acidity and aroma instead of stewing. The soils are very chalky and poor, sandy or clayey depending on the slope, and water is always in short supply. Dry-farmed wine, from hard ground.

What makes it interesting is what stayed planted here while everywhere else was pulling vines up: Mandó, Arcos, Forcallà, Bonicaire, Verdil. Grapes written off in the second half of the twentieth century as a mistake (too little colour, too little alcohol, ripening too late) and which are now the reason critics who never gave Valencia a second look have started paying attention. A local growers’ association has spent decades defending them, and the Terres dels Alforins is where you best understand why.