Valencia

Valencia carries a reputation that goes back a long way and does it few favours: for much of the twentieth century it was Spain’s great bulk-wine tap, lorryloads of nameless red heading off to be blended somewhere else. Volume, sun, alcohol. Nobody came here looking for finesse.

What that label hid was the geography. The moment you leave the coast and climb, the province turns into something else entirely: inland plateaus at 600 and 700 metres, chalky soils, genuinely cold nights and a Mediterranean climate with the handbrake on. It’s up there, in areas like the Terres dels Alforins or the Utiel-Requena tableland, that the wines changing the conversation are being made.

And they’re being made with the local grapes. Bobal, Monastrell, Verdil, Mandó, Arcos, Forcallà: varieties that got pulled up for giving too little colour or too little alcohol, and which turn out to be exactly what everyone now wants — light wines with living fruit and a recognisable sense of place. Valencia isn’t reinventing itself; it’s going back to what it was before it was asked for quantity.