The wines of Numanthia, from Spain’s Toro wine region: how they’ve tried to shift from the Parker-style to something more expressive of place
Website: https://www.numanthia.com/en-ww
Numanthia hit gold with the release of their 2004 Termanthia, which was among a group of five wines that were the first Spanish wines to be awarded 100 points by Robert Parker’s then Spanish wine critic, Jay Miller. Shortly afterwards, the winery was purchased from founders the Eguren family by Moët-Hennessy. Back in those days, the wines were very much made in the Parker style, and Termanthia had 200% new oak, which means that the wine was aged for a year in a new oak barrel, before being racked to another new oak barrel. Combine this with the hot summers of the Toro region and late picking to get the tannins ripe on the vine, and you have the recipe for a monster wine. I met with Estate Director Julio Rodriguez to hear about the journey that Numanthia have undergone over the last 15 years to begin to discover a more nuanced, less Parker-style expression of their place.
Julio Rodriquez started working as Estate Director at Numanthia in 2024. ‘It is a full circle,’ he says. ‘The first time I was involved with Numanthia was in 2007 working for Moet Hennessy in Paris.’ As he was a Spanish speaker, he was sent to Toro to help manage the integration of Numanthia into the Moet Hennesy stable after its purchase. When he arrived, he tasted through the wines, and remembers the impact the 2004 Termanthia had on him. He also fell for the remarkable old bush vines and the dramatic terroir that is Toro, in Spain’s north west. After the integration he went back to Paris, and then on to Argentina to work with the company’s wine projects there (Julio is Argentine), before moving to Napa, where he worked for Newton from 2017. He was working there during the fires in 2000 which destroyed Newton’s winery. After this disaster he helped the team to rent a winery and visitor centre and keep the operation going. [Two weeks ago the news came through that Newton has permanently closed its doors, but they still have Phelps in the portfolio representing Napa.]
‘The opportunity to return to Numanthia was my happiest professional day ever,’ he says. ‘Returning after so long I was happy to join.’
Founded in 1998, Numanthia was started by a family of vintners, the Eguens, who already had some projects in Rioja. They were looking to discover terroirs that would bring something a bit different to their customers. They came to Toro and found something incredible: very old vines that hadn’t succumbed to phylloxera. The soil in Toro is very sandy, and as a result phylloxera is present but it can’t destroy the vines.
The vines are also planted at very low density, 1000 vines per hectare (3 x 3 m), which helps them resist disease better. At first, the Eguens wondered why these scattered old blocks were still there, while many of the vineyards had been pulled out for other crops. What happened is that the local communities kept just the best plots for their own use. So Numanthia was born around these small old plots, prized by the locals. The Eguens began making incredible wines as they began to understand the place, and then with Termanthia 2004 they got the famous 100 point score, which was a big deal for the region.
Once Moët-Hennessy acquired the business, they wanted to assess the true potential of this incredible terroir. By the end of the noughties the fashion in wine had begun to change, and the Parker style was no longer in vogue. Yet these blockbuster wines were the ones that Numanthia was famous for.
So where should they go? ‘Some characteristics in Toro are not easy to change,’ says Julio. Incoming winemaker Manuel Losada began the process of thinking about the evolution of Numanthia’s wine style, beginning in 2010. Knowing the parameters of Toro, what can we change?
In the 2010s evolution began, and current winemaker Jesús Jiménez has taken this journey further. He joined in 2018 after almost 8 years working for Michel Rolland and Francois Lurton’s project in Toro and Rueda. Jesús joined in June, did his first vintage with a new team including newly appointed vineyard manager Alejandro Vicente, who’d previously worked as a viticultural scientist. Vicente is known as the gardener because he treats each of these old vines individually.
The two have been working hard in understanding what they can do in the vineyards so they can modernise the approach of the winemaking, without compromising the essence of Numanthia. The goal is to understand the parameters of Toro and then work out the best evolution of the style.
They are just working with older vines. The youngest are 30 years old and aren’t used for the top wines. For Numanthia the average vine age is 70-80, and for Termanthia it is 110-120 years old. Altogether they now have 163 hectares of vineyards, with 150 different blocks, some of them as small as 1400 square metres. These small blocks survived because of the quality they were delivering.
Of these, they own 80 and lease the others, or have long term contracts. They manage most of the blocks themselves. All of the vineyards are managed organically.
They are testing a lot of practices to see if they can bring more life into the soils and increase vineyard biodiversity. Cover cropping, which can be a challenge with such arid summers, is being trialled. If the rain in the winter has been good they allow the cover crop to go longer, into the spring (leaving it to the summer will take out too much water). They are only three years into trials. They are also testing BD501 and BD500, and they are expecting to see some positive outcomes in soil health. From 2019 they have been partnering with an NGO called GREFA who are specialised in biodiversity. They just got their latest audit a couple of weeks ago and they are seeing some animal species that haven’t been seeing for a while in the region. And there are five different bat species that have been spotted in the region again. The ecosystem is beginning to work better. They are also seeing big lizards, which are very sensitive to chemicals. They are planting trees, using insect hotels (this helps wild bees), and the NGO is helping them to understand their own ecosystem. They have found a species of solitary bee in the vineyard that is under extinction risk.
In terms of water management, they planted a key line block 4 years ago to see whether they can take advantage of the water in the environment. This key line approach is possible if you work with bush vines; it’s more trick.
‘With younger vines the balance in the grapes is disproportionate,’ says Julio. ‘It is the older vines that can thrive with the stress that’s common in this climate. The older the vines get, the more balanced the grapes, and the wines are deeper with more length.’
For the wines, the thinking about the fatigue of the Parker style came in 15 years ago. The way to change? Picking times, managing yields (sometimes increasing them). The decision point for picking is done on tannins, rather than sugar or acidity. The team assesses the tannins in the vineyard. You can pick earlier if you know how to manage the tannins in the winery, with two selection passes, one in the vineyard, then manual selection and optical sorting in the winery. The grapes are picked, go to cold room, then vinified the next day. They cold macerate for 4-5 days in smaller tanks (largest is 10 000 litres and it’s concrete). They have a lot of small tanks.
Numanthia as a winery stands out for balance and complexity, he says. And the third pillar is the timelessness of the approach: these old vines deserve the right treatment. ‘Everything in the winery is super slow. We don’t want the unpleasant elements from the grapes. Everything is super smooth.’
Termanthia 2004 had two years in barrel with 200% new oak; now the barrel regime is 13 months. They are moving away from small barrels. All French oak with lots of 400 litre barrels, some 600 litre barrels, and they are now finishing oak ageing in foudres.
2023 was the earliest pick ever, beginning on 23 August, almost a month earlier than in 2014, although the climate hasn’t changed much. They are picking earlier. ‘We realised we don’t need to leave the grapes on the vines for the tannins to resolve; it’s how we manage them in the winery,’ says Julio.
Of the wines we tried, the Termanthias are after the first changes from Manuel and his team. The Numanthias are from the Jesús regime, with even more changes moving away from the heavy wines. Julio says that these Termanhias are already great wines, ‘but when we have the 2018 and 2019 made by Jesús it will be an immense wine.’
THE WINES
Retail for Termanthia is c. £230 in the UK, whereas Numanthia comes in at just under £50. [As an aside, the 2015 we had in our glasses was corked, but fortunately there was a back-up bottle. It would have been an uncomfortable discussion with an old school French-style sommelier about such an expensive bottle!]
Termanthia 2014 Toro, Spain
Manuel Lousada looked at evolving from the Parker style to something more modern. It is quite an evolution from the profile they had in 2000. Brooding black cherry and blackcurrant fruit on the nose with nice intensity and some spicy detail. The palate is complex and spice laden with some stylish oak influence as well as refined but intense black cherry fruit. There’s amazing intensity and depth here: it’s as if the winemaking polish is struggling to hold in the innate wildness and intensity of the place. It’s an immense wine, still tight and brooding after 10 years, with good structure and a sense of freshness. It will be interesting to see how far this can go – I suspect a very long time. Finishes grippy and taut. 95/100
Termanthia 2015 Toro, Spain
This is a warmer vintage. This is really expressive with powerful, ripe black cherry and blackberry fruit with some fine herbal notes. It’s concentrated an intense, but there’s no sense of over-ripeness and the extraction is fairly gentle, which means that although this is a big wine, it has a sense of ease about with, with some tannic grip on the finish suggesting this has a long life ahead of it. Captures the power of the place really well. 96/100
Termanthia 2016 Toro, Spain
A more even growing season. Great balance here, combining richness with power, showing concentrated black cherry and blackberry fruit with some grunty tannins adding depth to the bold, rich fruit. Still youthful and with lots of restrained power, this has the ability to age well. There’s a nice savoury edge to the palate, with well integrated oak. 95/100
Numanthia 2018 Toro, Spain
This was Jesus’ first vintage, after taking over in June. Gentle maceration. Smart tannin management here with a silky texture on the mid-palate, showing sweet, warm berry fruits but then also some freshness, with a polish to the fruit. Everything is in place here, with substantial tannin but it hides under the fruit very effectively, giving an impression of sleekness and length, without any sense of jamminess or overripeness. There’s really nice balance and freshness here, but it has some of the depth of Toro. 95/100
Numanthia 2019 Toro, Spain
A warmer year. This is supple and fresh with a core of sweet cherry and raspberry fruit, showing some lushness to the fruit, but it’s well balanced. The tannins want to stick out a bit because of the warm vintage, but they are really well managed. The fruit has a lovely sweet core of fruit, and combines ripeness with freshness. Really well balanced: polished but still lively, and expressing its place well. 94/100
