Ep 580: The Grape Miniseries (refresh) -- Tempranillo

Wine for Normal People

Alcohol, Lifestyle, Arts, Education, Food, Wine, Dining, Grapes

4.6 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 1 October 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s been 13 years since I’ve done a grape miniseries on Tempranillo, so it was high time! This grape has come a long way in a decade +, proving that it has more nuance, terroir driven finesse, and versatility than it gets credit for.

Tempranillo is now the third most widely planted wine grape in the world, at 231,000 ha/570,000 acres. It is not widely grown outside of Spain but there are growers in 17 countries making a go of it. That said, 88% of Tempranillo’s vineyard area is in Spain and most of it is in the northern central parts, with Rioja and Ribera del Duero as the shining stars.

Photo: Getty Images via Canva

In this show, I go over the DNA and history of the grape and I discuss the many, many names it has. I talk about how it reacts to terroir and its behavior in the vineyard, and why it is so uniquely suited to the special areas in Spain where it thrives. I talk about winemaking and its effect on the grape and then I dive into the aging criteria of Spain (Generico, Crianza, Reserva, Gran Reserva) before going over the specific regions in Spain, Portugal, and the New World in which this grape does amazing things.

This is one of the most important grapes in the world, and the mini-series is packed with info! Enjoy and go try some different wines, you will be surprised at how different they are based on all the factors I mention in the show. You can test yourself to see if you can figure out if it’s the land or the hand of man that has an effect!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Wine for Normal People, the podcast for people who like wine, but not the snobbery that goes with it.
0:15.7	I'm your host Elizabeth Schneider, author of the Wine for Normal People book and certified wine dork.
0:21.3	The show is sponsored by Wine Access, the go-to source of people in the wine industry for
0:26.3	hard-to-find, limited production, high-quality wines at great prices.
0:30.6	You can hop online anytime at Wine Access.com slash WFMP.
0:35.3	Let them know you found out about them through me, or better yet, let me make
0:38.8	it easy. I'll select wines for you. Join my wine club and let me pick out six amazing bottles for you
0:44.3	quarterly for just $150, which includes shipping. Go to wine access.com slash normal to join and listen
0:51.4	in the middle of the show for more details.
0:56.9	I know so many of you love the grape mini series.
1:00.7	And I was looking back on what I have done in the past. And I have not updated Temporeeo since 2012.
1:04.9	And I always think it's funny.
1:06.2	Some people will, if your patrons, you can go back and listen to the back catalog.
1:09.9	That's the only way you'll get access to the entire back catalog. Patreon.com slash wine for normal people is how you can join and get access to that. But sometimes people listen to old shows and they hear me say something and they're say, well, that's not true. And I'm like, well, yeah, because it was like more than 10 years ago. things have changed even in the last five. So I need to update
1:29.6	some of these shows. And Temporeneo is definitely a grape that has come a long way. At least the
1:36.4	understanding of it by the wine press and certainly by me and my appreciation for it has grown
1:43.1	in another lifetime before I actually went to business
1:46.1	school and became, I guess, a real adult. I lived in St. John in the Caribbean. And I remember
1:52.0	going to the beach with my little boyfriend at the time. And we had a bottle of Rioja. I think it was
1:57.8	like Fastino Reserva Rioja. We thought we were so fancy. It was hilarious. We enjoyed a bottle on the beach that we could only hike to. And it was very fun. But I have a memory of that wine because it was really spicy and delicious. And that was sort of my only impression of Temprenio. I didn't really know that much about it, even though I knew a decent amount of wine back then. I just think I knew
2:18.9	a little bit more about French and Italian wine. But my understanding of Temporeneo has definitely
2:23.1	changed over the years, certainly since that fun afternoon at the beach. And I think that the
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