From a harsh, high plateau west of Valladolid, Toro makes some of Spain's most powerful reds from a local strain of Tempranillo called Tinta de Toro — dense, dark and warming, built by extreme heat and old ungrafted bush vines, many of them on their own pre-phylloxera roots.
This was the wine of medieval Castile and the conquistadors' ships; then the region slept for a century until a rush of investment revived it from the 1990s. Muscular, inky and unashamedly big, Toro is Spanish red at its most elemental — and one of its great modern discoveries.