The Spanish Grape Varieties and Regions in Our Portfolio

Posted by Bradley Axmith on May 20, 2026

Every producer in the Cosecha portfolio farms their own land, or ancestral land they have taken responsibility for. When Jason or someone from the Cosecha team visits (walking vineyards in Penedès before harvest, tasting barrel samples in Tenerife, sitting in a Galician cellar while it rains outside) the conversation is about soil, vine age and why one slope behaves differently from the one 300 metres away.

The grapes below are the ones we have spent time with, often where they were grown. This is the vocabulary of a portfolio built on one conviction: indigenous varieties in their native landscapes make more honest wine than anything grown to formula.

In this glossary

White grapes: Xarel·lo, Albariño, Verdejo, Godello, Garnatxa Blanca, Hondarrabi Zuri, Palomino, Listán Blanco, Macabeu & Parellada
Red grapes: Garnacha, Mencía, Cariñena, Sumoll, Trepat, Listán Negro
Regions
Where to buy these wines in Ontario

Where a wine is linked, it is the clearest example we know of the variety in the right hands. Vintages change; links point to the wine currently available.

White grapes

Xarel·lo

Also: Xarel-lo · Pansa Blanca (in Alella)

Catalonia's most underrated white grape. Xarel·lo is one of the three traditional Cava varieties, alongside Macabeu and Parellada, but has spent most of its modern history blended into anonymity. Old-vine examples from Penedès limestone show a different personality: nervy acidity, waxy texture and a mineral persistence closer to serious white Burgundy than to most Cava. Jordi and Ramon at Celler Pardas have championed it as a varietal wine for decades, farming on clay-limestone soils at their Can Comas estate. The result is taut, precise and long.

Try: Celler Pardas Xarel·lo · Celler Pardas Rupestris · all Celler Pardas wines

Albariño

Also: Alvarinho (in Portugal)

Atlantic Galicia's signature white. Albariño thrives on granite in the humid northwest, making wines defined by high acidity, stone fruit and a saline, sea-facing freshness inland regions can't replicate. Many commercial versions reduce the grape to clean acidity and little else. Xurxo at Bodegas Albamar in Cambados works the other way: organic farming, native yeasts and minimal sulphur, for Albariño with depth shaped as much by site as by variety.

Try: Albamar Albariño 2025 · all Bodegas Albamar wines

Verdejo

Home appellation: DO Rueda

Castilla y León's principal white variety, long established on the high plateau of Rueda. At 700–800 metres, hot days and cold nights preserve the aromatic intensity that makes Verdejo distinctive: bay leaf, a bitter-almond finish and a texture that separates the best examples from generic supermarket bottlings. Barco del Corneta makes Verdejo that reflects the landscape it comes from; Cucú is the entry point.

Try: Barco del Corneta Cucú 2025 · all Barco del Corneta wines

Godello

Home appellations: DO Bierzo · DO Valdeorras · DO Ribeira Sacra

Nearly extinct by the 1970s, Godello is one of the most striking recoveries in Spanish wine. Native to the northwest, it makes full-bodied whites with real structure: mineral, textured and able to develop in bottle in a way most Spanish whites can't. It needs well-sited vineyards and careful winemaking; shortcuts flatten it. Bodegas y Viñedos Mengoba in Bierzo farms old Godello vines with that care, producing whites that reflect the region's granite and slate.

Try: Mengoba Godello Viejo 2024 · all Mengoba wines

Garnatxa Blanca

Also: Garnacha Blanca · the white mutation of Garnacha/Grenache

A white-berried mutation of Garnacha, grown across Catalonia, Aragón and southern France. In warm, low sites it can turn flabby and alcoholic. Grown at altitude, as Celler Lagravera does in the gravelly pre-Pyrenean part of Costers del Segre, it shows a saline, mineral precision it rarely achieves further south. Lagravera has held Demeter biodynamic certification since 2006 and ferments in stainless steel without additions. The result is restrained, true to site and longer on the palate than it first appears.

Try: Lagravera Onra Blanc 2023

Hondarrabi Zuri

Also: Hondarribi Zuri · the Txakoli grape · Basque Country

The main white grape of Basque Txakoli, grown on a narrow coastal strip where Atlantic humidity and steep hillsides make viticulture demanding. It makes wines of low alcohol, fierce acidity and a light spritz, built for the pintxos and seafood of the Basque coast. Hillside coastal sites give tighter, more mineral wines than inland ones.

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Palomino Fino

The Sherry grape · DO Manzanilla–Sanlúcar de Barrameda

Palomino covers about 95% of the Sherry triangle's vineyards and, as a basic still wine, is neutral and low in acid. Place and process transform it. In Sanlúcar de Barrameda, grown on albariza (the chalky white soil of this corner of Andalucía) and aged under flor, it becomes Manzanilla, one of the most site-specific wines in the world. Ramiro Ibáñez at Cota 45 goes further, making unfortified Palomino that lets the albariza speak directly. The grape matters less than the chalk.

Try: Cota 45 UBE Miraflores 2024 · Cota 45 UBE Paganilla 2024

Listán Blanco

Also: Palomino (on the mainland) · Tenerife, Canary Islands

The same grape as Palomino, expressed very differently in the volcanic soils of the Canary Islands. Tenerife's ungrafted old vines (phylloxera never reached the island) give Listán Blanco savoury, saline and mineral character shaped by altitude and soil. The best wines come from high sites where cooler temperatures keep tension. Envínate makes separate Listán Blanco wines from different valleys, showing how much the same grape changes across one island.

Try: Envínate Palo Blanco 2022 (Valle de La Orotava) · all Envínate wines

Macabeu & Parellada

Cava varieties · Also: Macabeo

The other two-thirds of the traditional Cava blend. Macabeu brings aromatic freshness and moderate body; Parellada, usually planted higher to keep its acidity, adds floral lift and finesse. Together with Xarel·lo they form the base of traditional-method sparkling wine from Penedès. In Mas Candí's zero-dosage wines, nothing is added after disgorgement, so the wine is defined entirely by the vineyard rather than by added sweetness.

Try: Mas Candí sparkling wines · Corpinnat explained

From the vineyards: most of the places in this portfolio need constant human decisions: which old vines to keep, which native variety to restore, which hillside to farm when the slope rules out machines. That effort doesn't show up in marketing language. It shows up in the glass.

Red grapes

Garnacha

Also: Garnatxa (Catalan) · Grenache (French) · Cannonau (Sardinian)

One of Spain's most-planted red varieties and, for most of the twentieth century, its most misunderstood. In warm lowland sites Garnacha ripens easily to high alcohol, and those extracted, jammy bulk wines defined its reputation. High-altitude granite changes it. In the Sierra de Gredos west of Madrid, old-vine Garnacha at elevation becomes lighter, more structured and far more precise. In Priorat, it is co-planted with Cariñena on llicorella slate, where lean soils force concentration. Joan d'Anguera works with it in neighbouring Montsant. Garnacha's current prestige comes from producers who refused the easy sites.

Try: Joan d'Anguera wines (Montsant) · Read more: Spanish Grapes 101: Grenache

Mencía

Home appellations: DO Bierzo · DO Ribeira Sacra · DO Valdeorras

Northwest Spain's defining red, grown on slate and granite across Bierzo, Ribeira Sacra and Valdeorras. Mencía sits somewhere between Pinot Noir and Cabernet Franc in structure: aromatic, fairly light-bodied, with floral lift and a peppery mineral thread. Old vines on steep slate terraces in Ribeira Sacra give more concentrated, defined wines than younger vines on gentler Bierzo slopes. Fedellos do Couto in Ribeira Sacra and Mengoba in Bierzo show both sides.

Try: Fedellos do Couto Lomba dos Ares · Mengoba wines (Bierzo)

Cariñena

Also: Carignan (French) · Mazuelo · Samsó (Catalan)

Cariñena's reputation depends on yield. High-yielding Cariñena is anonymous blending material: tannic, acidic and charmless. Old vines on poor, slate-heavy soils in Priorat or Montsant give concentrated, dark-fruited wine with structural tension and an earthy mineral edge, a natural partner for Garnacha in the regions' traditional blends. Its thick skin and late ripening made it unpopular with big cooperatives but valuable to producers who want wines that age. Joan d'Anguera in Montsant uses its backbone as a structural element, not a flaw to manage.

Try: Joan d'Anguera wines (Montsant)

Sumoll

Native to Catalonia · linked to Vijariego Negro (Canary Islands)

One of the rarest grapes in the portfolio. Sumoll is a Catalan native that declined sharply as cooperatives pushed higher-yielding, more bankable varieties, and only a few hectares remain. Celler Pardas has been one of its most committed advocates: Sus Scrofa is their single-variety Sumoll red. Sumoll gives red wines of unusual freshness and mineral energy for its latitude, with red berry fruit, an herbal edge and easy drinkability. It is also linked to Vijariego Negro in the Canary Islands, a connection across two very different landscapes.

Try: Celler Pardas Sus Scrofa 2023 · Celler Pardas Sumoll Rosat 2025 · Borja Pérez Ignios Orígenes Vijariego Negro

Trepat

Home appellation: DO Conca de Barberà · Catalonia

Another of Catalonia's endangered native reds. Trepat is light-skinned and low in tannin, with a rose-petal and strawberry register unlike anything else on the peninsula. It ripens late, is hard to grow well, and most of it goes into Cava rosé rather than still wine. Josep Foraster in Conca de Barberà is the exception: organic 50-year-old vines on a single vineyard in the Sierra de Miramar at 500 metres, made as a still red. It is pale, perfumed and delicate, and that is the point.

Try: Josep Foraster Trepat 2023 · all Josep Foraster wines

Listán Negro

Native to the Canary Islands · ungrafted vines

Tenerife's main red variety, grown on volcanic soils with no mainland equivalent. Phylloxera never reached the Canary Islands, so Listán Negro grows on its own roots, as all European vines did before the louse arrived in the 1860s. The wines are light in colour and body for their latitude, with fresh red fruit and a smoky volcanic character found nowhere else. Envínate and Borja Pérez make the clearest examples in the portfolio.

Try: Envínate Migan Tinto 2021 · Borja Pérez Ignios Listán 2020 · Read more: The Wines of Tenerife

Regions

These varieties are shaped by the places they grow. Below are the appellations in the Cosecha portfolio. A DO (Denominación de Origen) is Spain's main quality tier; DOCa (DOQ in Catalan) is the highest, held only by Rioja and Priorat.

Penedès

DO Penedès · Catalonia · producers: Celler Pardas, Mas Candí, Can Ràfols dels Caus

Most people know it as Cava country, which is why its potential for still wine went unnoticed for so long. Penedès runs from warm coastal lowlands up to about 800 metres in the Alt Penedès, on clay-limestone soils suited to Xarel·lo, Macabeu and Parellada. The change here is treating those grapes as serious still wines and farming the old native varieties, Sumoll and Malvasia de Sitges, that the cooperative model abandoned.

Costers del Segre

DO Costers del Segre · western Catalonia · producer: Lagravera

One of Catalonia's lesser-known appellations, along the Segre river basin in the semi-arid west. Vineyards sit between roughly 200 and 1,100 metres on calcareous, sandy and granitic soils. Hot days, cold nights and little rain concentrate character. Lagravera farms the high pre-Pyrenean plots, where Garnatxa Blanca keeps its tension.

Priorat

DOCa Priorat · Catalonia · producers: Clos i Terrasses, Garcia & Valencia

One of two Spanish regions with DOCa status. Its defining soil is llicorella, a dark slate that drains so well that vines root deep and give tiny, concentrated yields. Garnacha and Cariñena on these soils, often farmed by hand on very steep terraces, make wines of intensity and mineral character. Low yields, heavy labour and international demand make Priorat one of Spain's most expensive regions.

Montsant

DO Montsant · Catalonia · producer: Joan d'Anguera

The DO that surrounds Priorat, without the price premium. Montsant shares much of Priorat's geology (slate, granite, limestone) with more soil variety and a lower profile, so producers often do comparable work at fairer prices. The d'Anguera family has farmed in Montsant since 1820, making Garnacha and Cariñena blends with real structure.

Conca de Barberà

DO Conca de Barberà · Catalonia · producer: Josep Foraster

A cooler, higher inland Catalan appellation that has long supplied Parellada to Cava houses. It is also the home of Trepat, which needs altitude and cool temperatures to make wines of finesse. Josep Foraster's single-vineyard Trepat is the best argument for paying the region more attention.

Sierra de Gredos

Vinos de Madrid · Castilla y León · Castilla-La Mancha

Not a DO in its own right but a mountain range west of Madrid that has become one of the most important developments in Spanish red wine in the past two decades. Old-vine Garnacha on granite at altitude, ignored until a handful of producers arrived in the early 2000s, turned out to make wines of startling precision and elegance.

Rías Baixas

DO Rías Baixas · Galicia · producer: Bodegas Albamar

The Galician DO that made Albariño known worldwide. The Atlantic inlets (rías) create a humid, temperate climate unlike the rest of Spain, and granite soils and the nearby ocean give the wines freshness and salinity. Bodegas Albamar works in Cambados, in the coastal Val do Salnés subzone, fermenting with native yeasts.

Ribeira Sacra

DO Ribeira Sacra · Galicia · producer: Fedellos do Couto

Possibly the most dramatic vineyard landscape in Spain: steep slate terraces above the Sil and Miño river gorges, too steep for machines, with naturally tiny yields. Mencía dominates, and with old vines, slate soils and Atlantic influence it makes wines of concentration and mineral length. Fedellos do Couto is among the region's most serious producers.

Bierzo

DO Bierzo · Castilla y León · producer: Bodegas y Viñedos Mengoba

On the western edge of Castilla y León, where the Atlantic's influence begins. The terrain is varied (valleys, hillsides, a range of altitudes) and the soils are mostly slate and granite. Mencía is the main red and Godello the white of note, here at its most structured. Mengoba works with both.

Rueda

DO Rueda · Castilla y León · producer: Barco del Corneta

Rueda's high plateau, at 700–800 metres, is Verdejo's natural home. Much Rueda is made industrially for export, and a cleaned-up version of Verdejo has become the template. Barco del Corneta works against that, making Verdejo that reflects the region's dryness, altitude and old vines.

Txakoli

DO Getariako · Bizkaiko · Arabako Txakolina · Basque Country

Three Basque DOs make white, and some red and rosé, wine on a narrow coastal strip where the Atlantic dominates. Steep hillsides, a wet climate and Hondarrabi Zuri define the style: low alcohol, high acidity and a light spritz, built for the local food.

Sanlúcar de Barrameda

DO Manzanilla–Sanlúcar de Barrameda · Andalucía · producer: Cota 45

The coastal town at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, set apart from the rest of the Sherry triangle by the sea. Its albariza soils are chalky white, and the Atlantic moderates temperatures, which affects both the flor (the yeast layer that protects ageing wine from oxygen) and the finished wine. Manzanilla, the biologically aged Sherry made only here, is Andalucía's most site-specific wine. Cota 45 applies the same thinking to unfortified Palomino. Read more in The Albariza Revolution.

Tenerife

Five DOs · Canary Islands · producers: Envínate, Borja Pérez

The most complex wine island in the Canaries, with vineyards from near sea level to well over 1,000 metres. Volcanic basalt and ash soils, ungrafted old vines and a split between the dry south and the wetter, forested north create a landscape with no real equivalent on the mainland. Listán Blanco and Listán Negro change character from valley to valley, which is why Envínate bottles sites separately.

Where to buy these wines in Ontario

Cosecha Imports brings these wines into Ontario through the LCBO consignment program. Order online by the case (6 or 12 bottles) and we deliver to your door: 2–3 business days in the GTA and 3–4 business days across the rest of Ontario. See shipping and delivery costs.