Farina

Bodegas Farina is certainly the old guard in Toro, the last wine region on the Duero River before it flows to the Portuguese border and becomes the Douro. The Farina family has made wine here since the 1950s, over thirty years before the Toro DO was created. And Toro itself feels old; ground breaking architecture is notable only by its absence. Toro was the site of Spain's first university founded in 1200 and it sometimes feels as if the town's winding streets haven't changed that much in the subsequent eight hundred years.

The grape here is Tinta de Toro, essentially a close relative of Rioja's Tempranillo, the clonal differences developing slowly over the centuries. Today Toro harvests around two weeks before Rioja. The Tinta de Toro berries are typically smaller with thicker skins than Riojan Tempranillo producing deeper, darker wines with more black fruit than red. The hot days and cool nights at this altitude (between 600m and 750m) help keep freshness and acidity in the wines.

Marcel Farina, now joined in the cellar by his son Bernardo, is the old man of Toro. The first winemaker the region had and the man who has done more than anyone else to spread the word about the region. His wines are classic Toro: bold and ripe with delicious fruit and subtle spice. They follow the traditional pattern of joven, crianza and reserva gaining in complexity with age. The writer John Radford, in The New Spain (there's that 'new' word again!), calls Manuel's wines "beautifully made, packed with fruit and probably the best Toro has to offer" noting that Farina also produces Toro's finest whites from the under-appreciated Malvasia grape.