Verdejo has grown on the high, stony plains of Castile since the Middle Ages, but for centuries it went mostly into oxidative, sherry-like wines of local reach. The turn came in the 1970s, when Marqués de Riscal — the Rioja house, advised by the Bordeaux oenologist Émile Peynaud — went looking for a Spanish white it could bottle fresh, and found it in Rueda's old vineyards.
The modern recipe followed: harvests at night to keep the grapes cool, fermentation in steel, time on the lees rather than in oak. What emerges is fennel and lime over Verdejo's telltale bitter-almond finish, cut by the acidity of a plateau where hot days give way to cold nights. Rueda has been Spain's everyday quality white ever since.