A Spanish wine list can look harder to read than it is. Bottles are often listed by region rather than by grape, and the words around them are a small, fixed set. Once you know them, ordering gets easy.
The words on the list
- Tinto is red, blanco is white and rosado is rosé.
- Espumoso means sparkling. Spain's best-known sparkling wine is cava.
- Generoso covers fortified wines, mainly sherry from Jerez.
- Dulce means sweet.
- Por copas means by the glass. Botella is a bottle and media botella a half bottle.
- Vino de la casa is the house wine.
Ageing terms such as crianza, reserva and gran reserva describe how long a wine was aged before release. Our guide to Spanish wine labels explains them, and the DO and DOCa guide covers the region system.
Region names worth knowing
The region tells you more than the grape name does on most Spanish lists. A short list to start with:
- Rioja and Ribera del Duero are the two best-known red regions. Both are built mainly on Tempranillo, which Ribera calls Tinto Fino. See Tempranillo explained.
- Priorat, in Catalonia, makes concentrated reds mostly from Garnacha and Cariñena.
- Rías Baixas, in Galicia, is Albariño country. See our Albariño guide.
- Rueda is known for white Verdejo.
- Txakoli is the light, mostly white wine of the Basque Country. See our Txakoli guide.
- Jerez means sherry. See fino and manzanilla.
How to order
Start with the by-the-glass list if there is one. It lets you try a white, a red and a sherry over a few tapas instead of committing to one bottle. Some bars pour in small measures to make that easier.
Tell the server what you like and what you want to spend. "Something like a Rioja, around this price" is a useful sentence in any language. In Spanish, ¿qué me recomienda? means "what do you recommend?".
Fino and manzanilla are served chilled, and they suit salty starters like olives, jamón and fried fish. Albariño and Txakoli are classic matches for seafood, and Rioja or Ribera for grilled meat. These are starting points, not rules.
Where to try it
These restaurants in our directory describe their Spanish wine lists in their own records:
- Pintxito, London (Covent Garden): a concise, all-Basque drinks list including Rioja and Txakoli, with the whole list served in 75, 125 and 175 ml.
- Don Pintxos, Brno: a Basque-style wine and tapas bar whose wine list has more than 150 references.
- Restaurante Castizo, Mexico City (Condesa): over 70% of its wine list is Spanish wine, according to its record.
- Barrafina Drury Lane, London: a succinct list of Spanish sherries, cavas and wines.
- Mera Tapas Restaurant, Würzburg: an all-Spanish wine list, plus Spanish beers and some Spanish PDO liqueurs.
