Ribera del Duero: Spain's High-Altitude Powerhouse

Geography and the Duero River

Spain produces more wine than almost any country on earth, but no Spanish red region earned its international reputation more rapidly or decisively than Ribera del Duero. In barely four decades since the Denominación de Origen was granted in 1982, making it one of Spain's youngest major DOs; Ribera has gone from near obscurity to a seat alongside Rioja as the reference point for great Spanish red wine. The reason begins with geography.

Ribera del Duero occupies a narrow east-west band along the Duero River valley as it cuts through the high plateau of Castilla y León in north-central Spain. The Duero, which flows west into Portugal, where it becomes the Douro and carves the great Port wine country before reaching the Atlantic at Porto, rises in the mountains of Soria, crosses Ribera del Duero, and continues through the ancient city of Valladolid before crossing the border. The region's name is simple: it is the "bank of the Duero." But the conditions the river valley creates are anything but simple.

The defining fact of Ribera del Duero is altitude. The vineyard floor sits between 750 and 900 meters above sea level, some of the highest vine-growing terrain in all of Europe. Only a handful of major wine regions on the continent, including parts of the Mosel (though at far lower elevations) and some Priorat slopes in Catalonia, approach this kind of elevation context. For comparison, Napa Valley's valley floor sits below 100 meters; Bordeaux's famous châteaux cluster around 10–20 meters of relief. Ribera del Duero is, in climatic terms, a completely different proposition.

At these altitudes, the region experiences what viticulturalists call extreme continentality, a climate defined by the absence of any moderating maritime influence. There are no nearby oceans, no large bodies of water. The plateau bakes under direct summer sun, then sheds that heat dramatically after sunset because thin mountain air holds warmth poorly. The result is diurnal temperature variation exceeding 20°C in summer: a July afternoon at 35°C can be followed by a night at 12–15°C. This swing is critical to understanding what makes Ribera wines taste the way they do. Heat during the day drives photosynthesis and sugar accumulation, pushing the grapes toward full ripeness and generous alcohol. The cold nights slow that accumulation, preserving the natural acidity and encouraging anthocyanins, the pigment compounds that produce deep color, to form and stabilize in the berry skins. The result is a wine that achieves full phenolic ripeness while maintaining the structural backbone of acid and tannin that defines great age-worthy reds.

Spring frost is a constant hazard at this altitude. The growing season is shorter than in most of Spain's other DO regions, and late frosts in April and May can devastate emerging buds. Producers site their best vineyards on slopes and elevated ridges where cold air drains away from the vines. August can bring hail. The climate demands viticulture as an act of attentiveness, not passive management.

Soils in the best parcels are predominantly limestone and clay, a combination that provides drainage, mineral nutrition, and a calcareous backbone that echoes in the wines as grip and structure. Chalk subsoil is present in many of the finest sites, reminiscent of the limestone-chalk profiles of Champagne, Bordeaux's Pomerol plateau, and parts of Burgundy. The geological parallel with Bordeaux is not incidental: those soils were a reason Bordeaux varieties were introduced to this valley in the 19th century and thrived.

The DO was not established until 1982, remarkably recent for a region with such deep history. Vega Sicilia had been producing internationally recognized wine since the late 19th century, but the surrounding vineyards operated without formal DO structure, which meant no production rules, no aging categories, and no collective identity. The 1982 designation changed everything: it created the framework that allowed the Ribera del Duero boom of the 1990s and 2000s to happen. Compare this to Rioja, which received DO status in 1925 and DOCa (the higher qualification tier, Denominación de Origen Calificada) in 1991; Ribera is, institutionally, a full generation younger.

Pro Tip: When a guest asks why they've never heard of Ribera del Duero if it's as good as you say, the answer is history: this is a young DO with an ancient tradition but a short commercial story. Rioja had sixty years of market development before Ribera even had its DO. What you're tasting in a great Ribera is what Rioja would have tasted like before it was tamed for export. Use that framing, it positions Ribera as authentic and underexplored rather than obscure.

Tinto Fino, Tempranillo at Altitude

Every great wine region produces something distinctive partly because of its grape, and Ribera del Duero's defining variety, Tinto Fino, is not simply Tempranillo with a different label. It is a distinct biotype of Tempranillo that has adapted over centuries of selection in a high-altitude, extreme-continental environment. Understanding that distinction is the key to understanding why Ribera del Duero wines look, smell, and taste the way they do.

Tempranillo is Spain's most widely planted red variety, grown across the country from Rioja in the north to Extremadura in the southwest. The variety is genetically versatile, adapted across dozens of different clonal selections to wildly different climates and soils, and its local names in different regions reflect those adaptations: Cencibel in La Mancha and Valdepeñas, Ull de Llebre in Catalonia, Tinta Roriz and Aragonez in Portugal, and Tinto Fino (sometimes also called Tinta del País) in Ribera del Duero. In Rioja, it is simply called Tempranillo, often blended with Garnacha, Graciano, and Mazuelo.

What makes Tinto Fino distinct is a suite of physiological traits selected for survival and quality at high altitude. The berries are smaller than typical Tempranillo, smaller berries mean a higher ratio of skin to juice, which translates directly to more color compounds, more tannin, and more extract per liter of wine. The skins are thicker, a natural adaptation to intense ultraviolet radiation at altitude and to the dramatic temperature swings that stress the berry wall throughout the growing season. The vines ripen later than Tempranillo does at lower elevations, in Ribera, harvest often extends into October and sometimes early November, because the shorter growing season and cool nights slow the accumulation of sugar relative to what the same variety achieves in, say, the warmer Rioja Alta.

The result in the glass is markedly different from Rioja Tempranillo. Ribera del Duero Tinto Fino typically shows deeper, more saturated color, often inky purple-ruby in youth, with exceptional density. The aromatics lean toward darker fruits: blackberry, black cherry, dark plum, cassis. Oak aging adds cedar, cigar box, and dark spice. There is less of the earthy, leathery, tertiary character that marks aged Rioja Reservas; Ribera wines read as more primary-fruit driven in their aromatic profile, which paradoxically can make them seem more international and Cabernet-adjacent to guests who are less familiar with Spanish styles. The tannins are more muscular; not harsh, in skilled hands, but structurally prominent in a way that demands either significant aging or appropriate food pairing to resolve.

The DO regulations permit other red varieties for blending: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Malbec are all authorized. These are not incidental additions; they are part of the region's history. Vega Sicilia imported Bordeaux varieties in the 1860s, and Cabernet Sauvignon has been part of its flagship blend ever since. Merlot contributes roundness and mid-palate texture. Malbec appears in small percentages at some estates. But unlike in Rioja, where Garnacha historically played a dominant blending role, Ribera wines are almost always Tinto Fino-dominant, often 100%, particularly at the single-estate and village level where the message is one of terroir specificity.

The contrast with Rioja Tempranillo is worth internalizing for floor purposes. Rioja's Tempranillo, grown at lower altitudes (300–700 meters), in a climate moderated by Atlantic influence from the Bay of Biscay in the Rioja Alta and Alavesa, produces wines of greater elegance, softer tannin, and more aromatic complexity in a floral, red-fruit, leather, and tobacco direction. Traditional Rioja Gran Reserva, with its years in American oak, develops a distinctive vanilla, coconut, and dried-fruit character that is unmistakably regional. Ribera del Duero offers less of that Rioja aromatic signature. What it offers instead is power, density, and structural architecture that points as much toward Bordeaux or Napa Cabernet as toward anything else Spanish.

Pro Tip: The most efficient comparison phrase for the floor: "If Rioja is Spain's Pinot Noir, elegant, aromatic, terroir-expressive, then Ribera del Duero is Spain's Cabernet Sauvignon. More power, more structure, more density." This analogy is imprecise (both are Tempranillo) but it lands immediately with guests who navigate by variety rather than region, and it positions each wine in its correct stylistic camp without requiring a lecture on biotype genetics.

Vega Sicilia, The Icon

No discussion of Ribera del Duero can proceed without Vega Sicilia. It is not merely the most prestigious estate in the region. It is arguably the most historically significant wine estate in Spain, the first wine produced here to command serious international attention, the first to prove that Spanish red wine could compete with the great estates of Bordeaux and Burgundy on their own terms. Its story is inseparable from the story of the region itself.

The estate was established in 1864 by Eloy Lecanda y Chaves, a Spanish landowner who had traveled to Bordeaux and returned with cuttings of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Malbec along with a conviction that the soils and climate of the Duero valley could produce world-class wine. The Bordeaux varieties were planted alongside the native Tinto Fino, and from the beginning, the estate's wines were blended from both, a practice that continues to this day and distinguishes Vega Sicilia categorically from the "pure Tinto Fino" movement that defines many of Ribera's modern producers. The estate changed hands several times over the following century, eventually being acquired by the Álvarez family in 1982, the same year, perhaps symbolically, that the DO was granted. The Álvarez family remains the owner today, and under their stewardship Vega Sicilia has ascended to its current position as one of the most collectible wine estates in the world.

The flagship is Único. No other wine name in Spain carries the same weight, the name literally means "Unique," and the wine earns it. Único is a blend of Tinto Fino, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Merlot, with the exact proportions varying by vintage depending on which varieties performed best that year. What sets it apart is not just the blend but the aging protocol: Único spends an extraordinary period in oak and bottle before release, typically a combination of American and French oak barrels of various sizes across multiple years. The total pre-release aging routinely approaches or exceeds 10 years from harvest. Recent releases illustrate this: the single-vintage 2010 Único reached the market in 2019, roughly a decade after harvest. There is no other major wine in the world released under a comparable timeline, with the partial exception of some Colheita Ports. The wine itself is not made from any single vintage in some years; Vega Sicilia has released multi-vintage blends of Único (called "Reserva Especial") using barrel lots from multiple exceptional years combined for greater complexity. The Reserva Especial releases, designated on the label simply with the component vintages (e.g., "Cosecheros de 1994, 1995, 2000"), are among the most distinctive wines produced anywhere in Spain.

Valbuena 5° is the estate's second wine, released after five years of aging (hence "5°", fifth year). It is earlier-drinking than Único, slightly less complex, and meaningfully less expensive. For guests who want a Vega Sicilia experience without the pricing or patience requirements of Único, Valbuena is the correct recommendation. It is not a compromise; it is a genuinely serious wine at a lower entry point.

Alión is a different project entirely, though it shares the Álvarez family ownership. Established in 1991 on a separate estate in Ribera del Duero, Alión represents Vega Sicilia's response to the modern-style movement in the region: 100% Tinto Fino, aged primarily in French oak (not American), released much earlier than Único or Valbuena, and expressing a more fruit-forward, structurally approachable style. Guests who find Único's profile too exotic or its release timeline too complicated can start with Alión. It functions as a style bridge.

A common source of guest confusion: Macán, the Álvarez family's joint venture with Baron Benjamin de Rothschild (the Edmond de Rothschild branch), is produced in Rioja; not Ribera del Duero. It is a Rioja wine, made primarily from old-vine Tempranillo from the Rioja Alavesa. Knowing this distinction prevents an embarrassing error on the floor.

Pricing for Vega Sicilia places it in a rarefied tier: Único retails between $350 and $700 depending on vintage, with secondary market prices significantly higher for older releases. Valbuena sits around $100–$150. Alión is typically $80–$120. These prices position Vega Sicilia not as an everyday Ribera recommendation but as a cellar anchor and special-occasion wine, the kind a guest orders to mark a significant event, or that a beverage director places on a list to signal the program's seriousness.

Pro Tip: The single most striking thing you can tell a curious guest about Vega Sicilia Único is the aging timeline. "This wine spent more than ten years in the estate's cellars before they decided it was ready. Your 2023 release has a 2010 on the label. The estate was making wine before your grandfather was born." That context, conveyed simply and without condescension, stops a table cold. It frames the price not as arbitrary luxury markup but as the cost of a decade of careful custody.

The Modern Classics

Vega Sicilia proved that Ribera del Duero could make wine of world-class quality. The second generation of the region's story, beginning in the 1970s and accelerating through the 1980s and 1990s, proved that world-class quality was not limited to a single estate. A handful of producers transformed the region from Vega Sicilia's private showcase into a serious collective wine destination. These are the names that built modern Ribera del Duero.

Alejandro Fernández and Pesquera occupy a singular place in that history. Fernández was a self-taught winemaker and agricultural machinery manufacturer from Pesquera de Duero who, in 1972, planted vineyards on his family's land and began making wine. His first commercial release, in the early 1980s, caught the attention of American wine critic Robert Parker, who wrote about it with the kind of enthusiasm that, in the pre-internet era, made careers overnight. Parker's praise positioned Pesquera, and by extension Ribera del Duero, on the international wine map in a way that nothing had since Vega Sicilia. Fernández produced wine with conviction: 100% Tinto Fino, aged in American oak, assertive tannins, the full force of the plateau's power without apology. The flagship bottling, Janus Gran Reserva, is produced only in exceptional vintages and aged for several years in oak plus further time in bottle, a Reserva-tier expression of Tinto Fino's potential for complexity and longevity. Fernández later founded Condado de Haza, another Ribera estate producing good-value Tinto Fino at a more accessible price point, making the family name available at multiple levels of the list.

Dominio de Pingus represents the opposite end of the modern Ribera story; not a self-taught Spanish visionary, but a trained Danish winemaker who arrived in the region in the early 1990s and created, with extraordinary speed, one of Spain's most coveted and expensive wines. Peter Sisseck came to Ribera del Duero after training in Bordeaux and made his first vintage of Pingus in 1995 from a small parcel of ancient, low-yielding Tinto Fino vines. The wine received 100 points from Robert Parker. Then it received 100 points again. In a market where 100-point wines become instant phenomena, Pingus, with its tiny annual production of a few thousand bottles, became the most sought-after Spanish red of the 1990s and 2000s. The estate farms biodynamically, yields are absurdly low, and the wines are priced accordingly: Pingus trades for $400–$800+ per bottle at release, and secondary market prices frequently exceed $1,000. The second wine, Flor de Pingus, is produced in larger quantities at more accessible prices ($80–$120) and represents the estate's philosophy applied to a broader selection of fruit. Pingus is the reference point for the micro-production, collector-tier end of Ribera del Duero, what Pétrus or Screaming Eagle is to their respective regions.

Protos is Ribera del Duero's historical ground. Founded in 1927 as a cooperative in Peñafiel, predating the DO by more than half a century; Protos is one of the region's oldest cooperatives, and it ceded its "Ribera Duero" brand name to the DO in 1982. The cooperative collected and vinified wine from its member growers through the decades when Ribera del Duero had no international identity and Vega Sicilia operated as an outlier. When the DO was established in 1982, Protos was among the very few historic wineries operating in the zone. Today it has modernized significantly, it operates a striking new facility designed by architect Richard Rogers (of Lloyd's of London fame), and produces a full range from entry-level to quality Reserva and Gran Reserva. Protos is not the most artisanal name in Ribera, but its historic significance and consistent quality at mid-market pricing make it a reliable floor recommendation and an interesting story for guests who appreciate wine history.

Aalto was founded in 1999 by Mariano García, the former head winemaker at Vega Sicilia (he spent 30 years there), and business partner Javier Zaccagnini. García left Vega Sicilia in 1998, to considerable industry surprise, and almost immediately founded Aalto as a vehicle for his own winemaking vision in Ribera. The quality has been consistently exceptional. Aalto's wines show the influence of a winemaker who spent three decades at Vega Sicilia, the structure is impeccable, the aging intelligent, the balance between power and refinement exemplary, but the style is more modern and more immediately accessible than Único. Aalto PS (Pagos Seleccionados; Selected Parcels) is the flagship single-vineyard selection, routinely among the most impressive wines in the region at its price point ($60–$100). For guests who want seriousness and artistry at a price meaningfully below Pingus or Único, Aalto is the recommendation.

Emilio Moro is a family estate in Pesquera de Duero that represents the accessible-excellence end of the modern Ribera spectrum. The family has farmed vines in the valley for generations, and the estate was formalized under winemaker Emilio Moro in the 1980s. The flagship bottling, Malleolus, is a single-vineyard Tinto Fino of genuine quality at a price point ($40–$60) that positions it as a natural weekly-driver wine for guests who want Ribera without the austerity pricing of the region's trophy bottles. Malleolus de Valderramiro is the single-parcel selection from old vines, stepping up in concentration and complexity. Emilio Moro's reliability and price positioning make it one of the most useful by-the-glass and entry-tier Ribera recommendations in any program.

Pro Tip: The style spectrum from Pesquera to Pingus maps onto something guests can understand quickly. Pesquera is traditional Ribera, bold, assertive, built around Tinto Fino's natural power, aged in American oak. Pingus is a modern luxury expression, biodynamic, micro-production, French oak, extraordinary concentration. If a guest asks what the best Ribera is, the honest answer is: it depends on what you want. Pesquera and Aalto are what Ribera is. Pingus is what one brilliant winemaker can make Ribera become when resources and obsession are unlimited.

The Village Structure and Emerging Sub-Zones

Ribera del Duero spans a geographic territory of striking diversity. The DO covers portions of four provinces, Burgos, Segovia, Soria, and Valladolid, across a swath of plateau roughly 115 kilometers long and rarely more than 35 kilometers wide at its broadest point. Despite this apparent spread, the production map is highly concentrated: the overwhelming majority of quality wine originates in the western Burgos sector, particularly in the cluster of villages near Peñafiel and along the Duero's northern tributaries.

Burgos province is, for all practical purposes, Ribera del Duero's core. The village of Pesquera de Duero, where Alejandro Fernández built his estate and which gave his wine its name, sits in the heart of the highest-quality zone. The area around Roa de Duero and the Valladolid border zone includes prime vineyards from Aalto, Vega Sicilia's newer holdings, and several other respected estates. The Peñafiel area, where Protos is based, marks the region's historic center. These villages share the ideal elevation, northeast slope exposures, and limestone-clay soils that produce the most structured and age-worthy wines.

Soria province in the east represents the more extreme, cooler-climate fringe of the DO, higher altitude, shorter season, wines that can be leaner and more acidic. Some producers value the freshness of Soria fruit as a blending component, but single-estate Soria wines are rarer. Segovia in the south marks the DO's lower border, with vineyards at slightly lower altitude that can produce riper, more accessible styles. Valladolid in the west is where the Duero begins its journey toward Portugal and where some of the largest commercial volumes originate.

Despite this geographic and stylistic diversity, Ribera del Duero has not yet codified a village classification system, the kind of hierarchical map that Burgundy's Premier and Grand Cru system or Rioja's recently introduced single-village and single-vineyard designations represent. The debate over village classification in Ribera mirrors exactly what played out in Rioja over the last decade. Producers with historically significant terroir, the equivalents of Ribera's Pesquera, Roa, or Anguix, want the ability to put village names on labels and command the price premium that site specificity generates. Consumers in international markets, conditioned by Burgundy, are primed to pay more for a named place.

The resistance comes from large commercial producers who benefit from blending across provinces and selling under the DO Ribera del Duero umbrella without the burden of geographic precision. If the classification system grants premium status to certain villages, wines from less-distinguished subzones face a repositioning problem. The political economy of classification always disadvantages the average and advantages the exceptional, and in a region where the exceptional is rare and the average is much of the volume, the exceptional has to fight for recognition that is in its clear interest but nobody else's.

Informed observers expect some form of pago (single-estate) or pueblo (village) classification to emerge in Ribera del Duero within the next decade. Several producers are already using vineyard names on labels voluntarily; Aalto PS's Pagos Seleccionados designation, Emilio Moro's Malleolus de Valderramiro, Pingus itself as a de facto single-vineyard wine, as a commercial workaround that the market has absorbed as a quality signal even without regulatory backing.

Pro Tip: When a guest notices that two Ribera wines have different village names or parcel designations on the label and asks what that means, it is an opportunity to educate rather than qualify. Explain that Ribera is working toward formal classification, that the region is in the same place Burgundy was a century ago, developing the language to express site specificity. The guest who understands they are watching a great region find its cartographic identity will feel more invested in following the story. That is the mindset of a returning guest.

Floor Strategy, Ribera vs. Rioja, and Positioning Power

The most important floor decision you will make with a Spanish red wine is whether a guest needs Ribera del Duero or Rioja. These are the two benchmarks of Spanish red wine, different in character, in style, in price positioning, and in the guest profile that gravitates naturally toward each. Getting this right is what separates a floor professional who sells wine from one who builds relationships through it.

The core stylistic distinction is straightforward to remember and easy to communicate. Rioja, particularly Gran Reserva from the Rioja Alta or Alavesa, is elegant, aromatic, and defined by extended oak aging, often in American oak, that imparts vanilla, coconut, tobacco, and dried-fruit character alongside Tempranillo's characteristic red fruit and earthy leather. It is accessible in youth (especially modern-style Rioja), complex in age, and lower in tannin than Ribera. Ribera del Duero is darker, denser, more tannic, and more structurally demanding. Its aromatics point toward blackberry, cedar, iron, and dark spice rather than Rioja's rose-and-tobacco signature. It rewards patience with food and benefits from at least brief decanting even in youth.

The guest-matching logic on the floor follows directly from this distinction:

• The Cabernet drinker: This is Ribera's natural audience. A guest who orders Napa Cabernet, Right Bank Bordeaux, or asks for "something bold and structured" is ready for Ribera del Duero without any friction. The pitch writes itself: "If you love structured, age-worthy Cabernet Sauvignon, Ribera del Duero Reserva will speak to you, it has that same dark-fruit backbone and architectural tannin, but it's grown at 900 meters altitude, which gives it an acidity that most Napa Cab can't match. And it's priced meaningfully less for comparable quality."

• The Rioja lover who wants more: A guest who is already a Rioja drinker and wants to go deeper into Spanish wine is the ideal Ribera convert. They understand Tempranillo, they appreciate Spanish wine's value proposition relative to Bordeaux or Burgundy, and they are ready for the comparison: "Ribera is like Rioja turned up, same grape family, more power, more structure, darker fruit. It's what happens to Tempranillo when you take it to extreme altitude."

• The guest who has never had Spanish red wine: Start with an accessible Ribera; Emilio Moro or Aalto entry-level, rather than jumping to a Reserva or Gran Reserva. The wines need food and the full arc of a meal to show well; a heavy-extraction Ribera served by the glass without food context can read as aggressive. Frame it around the food: "The lamb is going to make this wine sing."

Value tiering in Ribera del Duero is legible and useful for floor navigation. The entry to mid-market tier ($25–$65) includes Emilio Moro Malleolus, Condado de Haza (Alejandro Fernández's second estate), Aalto standard bottling, and Protos Reserva, all wines of genuine quality that represent the DO without requiring trophy-wine spending. The quality ceiling ($80–$200) encompasses Aalto PS, Pesquera Janus, Flor de Pingus, and Alión, wines appropriate for serious wine guests and special occasions. The icon tier ($300+) is Vega Sicilia Único and Pingus, investment-grade wines that belong on a list as anchors and talking points as much as for their ordering frequency.

Cellaring conversations with guests are among the best Ribera del Duero opportunities you have. The wines age magnificently. Único is the extreme example, already released at ten-plus years, it drinks for another twenty. But even a standard Ribera Reserva from a respected producer benefits enormously from five to ten years of cellaring. Guests who have a cellar, or who ask about wines to lay down, should hear Ribera del Duero alongside Barolo, Bordeaux, and Left Bank Bordeaux, it belongs in that conversation and it typically enters it at a significantly lower price point.

Food pairings in the Ribera del Duero context are anchored by the great Castilian roasting traditions. Cochinillo asado, roast suckling pig, the signature dish of Segovia, is the canonical pairing: the wine's firm tannin and dark-fruit structure cut through the fat of the young pig's skin and meat in a way that transforms both. Lechazo asado (roast milk-fed lamb from Aranda de Duero or Burgos) is the region's other great dish, the lamb's delicate sweetness and the wine's structural power create a tension that resolves into something deeply satisfying. Aged Manchego and other Castilian sheep's-milk cheeses are excellent cheese-course pairings. Charcuterie from the region; Ibérico ham, chorizo, morcilla, pairs naturally with the wine's savory, meaty character.

Vintage awareness matters. Outstanding years in recent memory: 2012 (concentrated, classic structure, ageing beautifully), 2016 (widely considered one of the greatest vintages in Ribera history, cool season, exceptional balance of fruit, acid, and tannin), 2018 (riper, more immediately approachable), 2020 (cooler, fresher, excellent structure). Challenging years include 2017 (spring frost dramatically reduced volumes; surviving fruit was often exceptional but quantities tiny) and parts of 2022 (extreme summer heat; quality highly producer-dependent).

Pro Tip: The roast suckling pig pairing is one of the most visually compelling table-side wine stories in all of Spanish cuisine. If your restaurant serves cochinillo or anything with crispy roasted pork, including pork belly or heritage breed roast, the Ribera Reserva is your food-pairing pitch. "This wine was built for roast pig. The region's most famous dish and its most famous wine come from the same high-altitude plateau. When you taste them together, you understand why, the tannin literally cuts through the fat and cleanses the palate for the next bite." Guests who hear this and try it will order it again. Every time.