One of the many things that make Spanska Kvalitetsviner special is that a lot of Spanish wineries age the wine for their clients in both oak barrels as well as bottles. This implies that you will be able to taste some cellared wines which have aged to an extent where they taste their best without having to worry about the space for storing them at home.
The various SpanskaKvalitetsviner will have a lot of terms like Crianza, Joven, Reserva or Gran Reserva which are there to tell you the age of that wine. The wines with Gran Reservas have had a long time being cellared and those with Joven have not spent as much time in the winery.
Different Spanish Quality Labels
Understanding labels of SpanskaKvalitetsvinercan be a bit difficult and no more than hundred and five Spanish wine appellations, which are divided among 5 quality tiers:
- DOCa (Denominación de Origen Calificada)- It is the highest level of classification of Spanish wine. The word Calificado means ‘guaranteed’ or ‘qualified’ which implies a guarantee for the quality of the wine to be very high. Rioja and Priorat are the only two regions that have DOCa status for their wines.
- VP (Vino de Pago) – It is a single-estate classification for each and every high-end wineries but are unable to have DO status for their wines, maybe because they have a vineyard outside the catchment area of DO or maybe the style of their wine is not in agreement with the local DO production laws, however, the quality remains to be high.
- DO (Denominación de Origen) – It shows the origin of the wine geographically and also the style of the wine. Like many or almost every RiasBaixas wines are very crisp and Albarino-based wines which are from a specific area of southern Galicia. In order to have the use of DO title, it is important that the wines must conform to a lot of production conditions which are applicable to both vineyard management as well as winemaking techniques.
- VT (Vino de la Tierra) – It literally and originally means, ‘wine of the land’, and its main focus is on the origin of the particular wine rather than the quality or the style of that wine. It is considered to be very flexible in SpanskaKvalitetsviner. They may be varietals or could also be blends from a variety of grapes and the VT law imposes a few limitations on the yields of vineyards.
- VC (Vino de Calidad con IndicaciónGeográfica)- This translates to ‘wine of quality with an indication (geographical)’. These wines have been theoretically a level up in terms of the quality from Vino de la Tierra, but they are still not considered to be a DO quality. It can be seen as an intermediate and temporary status between VT and DO. There exists some seven of such Vino de Calidad titles. Thus, its quality can be comprehended to be that of workable but it is still not the best.
