It would be irresponsible for InterWined to say that Spanish wines have not come a long way. The advent of the so-called ‘high expression’ wine styles – more fruity aggression, less oak — in the early 2000s modernised the way we view, and drink, Spanish wines.

But now the country, or at least the consumers of its wine, is and are being let down.

Take the mass producer, Compania Vinicola Norte de Espana (Cune, for short), and its 2005 Vina Real Crianza available at The Bottle and Basket wine shop in Highgate for £8.50. Wait, make that £9.60. Actually, it costs both.

Back to that in a second.

Travel through Rioja and it is a region covered with vineyards. In some areas it seems that even the hardiest weeds wouldn’t have room to pop out, the rows of vines are so numerous and packed together. One bodega I visited claimed to have 57,000 barrels of wines aging in its vast, four-storey “cellar.” Not exactly romantic, but both are very useful in terms of major wine production.

Cune (never visited, mind you) uses thousands of hectares of vines (the fact that it is handpicked boggles the mind) to produce its crianza, the youngest of its quality Rioja Alavesa. And blends several grapes, but uses primarily Tempranillo and creates, in the case of the 2005, and decent, servable wine that caters to many tastes, but still maintains a touch of that herby Spanish-ness and the dryness of the chalky soil.

To continually produce wines on this scale and to keep a noticeable level of individuality and sense of place is remarkable, I find.

But according to the Bottle and Basket, this cost is unsustainable at current currency conversions. Yes the price differential is explained by one simple factor: the Euro is inflating out of control, people!

OK, stop panicking. Put out the car fire. Stop looting.

Truly the world has bigger shipwrecks to salvage.

But it is difficult, as a wine enthusiast, and a rather macho one at that, to see such a marked difference in the price of the same wine, in the same shop (just ordered from Spain at different times) and to know deep inside the painful truth:

Vina Real Crianza is not worth more than £9.

In fact, even £8.50 seems kinda pushing it, considering the looming recession. They do have 1,000 of hectares of vineyards after all.

The other thing, come to think of it, is why haven’t American wines dropped in price?

So, this all leads to one all-important question:

Why do wine consumers only seem to get robbed with currency conversions, but never rewarded?

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