Transcript:
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Hello, bonjour, and welcome to your new Bonner Private Wines Wine Video. Today, I want to tell you a little wine story, quite short, but fascinating, this story of the single most expensive wine coming out of Spain. Our next collection from the club that you will receive would be about Spanish wine. So you might as well slowly start looking into Spain as a fascinating wine country.
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You're not going to be receiving their wine that we're looking at today because it's so rare and very expensive, upwards of $1,000 a bottle. And the strangest thing is that you never heard of it. And even I would bet that most wine connoisseurs around the world have never heard of it either. Have you ever heard heard of this wine made in the appellation of Toro?
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Have you ever heard of the appellation of Toro? And that wine is called Teso la Monja. Have you ever heard that name before? Well, let me tell you the story of the most expensive Spanish wine. I haven't even heard of the village in the wine appellation called Toro or Toro, you could say in English. Well, it is fairly known at this stage in the world of wine, but certainly not as famous as Rioja or Riberra del Duero or Priorat.
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Those have been pumping out all of the famous then most expensive Spanish wines for decades. Now, with such legendary wines that you may have heard about as being the most expensive in Spain before, like Dominio Pingus or Vega Sicilia, those are in the Riberra del Duero, legendary wines, or bodegas la Muga or la Rioja Alta in Rioja or are the real Palacios in Priorat, those are the wines people think of when they think of the most expensive bottles from Spain.
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Not about Toro. Coincidentally or not, I did spend two years of my winemaking career working in Spain. I worked in many different countries, but one of my most significant experiences as a winemaker was in Spain for two vintages some 15 years ago, and it happened to be in the small village of Toro. So I know the area quite well, even though this, this or more wine didn't even exist at the time, believe it or not.
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But we'll get back to this strange story in a minute. Let me tell you about Toro. It's indeed a rather small medieval village somewhat lost in the nothingness of the semi-arid climate of Castilla, so the heart of the culture of Spain, you have to drive about 45 minutes outside of cities like via the Leith or Salamanca through that what looks like half a desert of Castilla.
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And finally you get to that small village of Toro surrounded by vineyards. It's the third and lesser known wine growing area where the iconic Spanish grape tempranillo is grown. Tempranillo has for centuries been making the most revered wines in Spain, but up until recently, Rioja and Ribera del Duero were the reigning wine regions. The Rioja has a bit of a cooler climate of the three, being closer to the Atlantic Ocean, so making finer but also a bit thinner wines from Tempranillo. Ribera del Duero is a bit southern and it's warmer as well, so the wines are denser and bigger. Toro is even more inland, so it's even warmer and extremely hot summers there. So the expression of tempranillo here is huge. It's massive with extremely concentrated wines, often reaching 15 plus percent of alcohol. That's in short, the Toro wine region.
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But let's discuss the best of said of all Toro wines now, and certainly the most expensive one. Back when I was living in Toro around 2007, 2008, we heard a very big wine transaction had taken place in the area of one of the most famous bodega or winery in Toro, called Bodega Numanthia, had become famous internationally for scoring 100 points by Robert Parker's wine advocate for its flagship wine that was called the Termanthia. Released a few years prior, the vintage 2004 for that wine had received 100 points.
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Big news: there's only a handful of 100 points wines announced by the Wine Advocate every year. This sort of news is big for a region. It had propelled the bodega into international stardom. Just a relatively short while after this scoring performance, the Eguren family who owned Bodega Numanthia announced that they had sold the bodega to the French luxury group LVMH.
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The company headed by one of the richest men on earth, Bernard Arnault. I'm pretty sure you've heard about him. Who owns all the most famous luxury brands, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Gucci, but also wine and alcohols brands like Moet Chandon, Champagne, Veuve Clicquot, Dom Perignon, many more, Ruinart, Chateau d’Yquem, also in Sauternes, one of the wonders of the world of wine, Cheval Blanc in Saint-Emilion, and so on.
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So LVMH had bought the flagship winery of Toro, that bodega, Numanthia, for over €20 million, I think it was at the time, which was big for a rural area. The fact alone that such an important wine luxury company had an interest in Toro wines solidified the reputation of Toro as a rising star in the wine. world. Not only have they scored a 100 point wine, but a big company was buying for a lot of money a winery there.
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I was personally quite pleased with that news too, since I was a winemaker of another flagship winery in Toro making one of the best wines in the appellation as well, a wine called Campo Eliseo. So I felt like I was where a winemaker ought to be at the moment. At the time I was in the hot area, figuratively and literally. Where this story becomes interesting and when it gets onto our wine of the day, the Eguren family that had sold Numanthia, they are very important and famous family in the Spanish wine world as they also owned a famous winery in Rioja,
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Established in 1870, an old winery called Sierra Cantabria, one of the most famous wines from Rioja and from Spain. So a very old wine family from Spain. After selling that winery in Toro to LVMH, they didn't leave that rising Toro area. They bought instead another vineyard, a different vineyard, and started a different winery, a different project that they called Teso la Monja.
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This is fairly big estate with 200 plus acres of vines with some of its vineyards dating back to the pre phylloxera era, over 130 years of age. They avoid using herbicides and cistern products as is quite popular now. They look for the natural balance of the vineyard with small productions of between 1000 to 2000 kilograms per hectare of grapes.
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And from the best in all this vineyards, they make this flagship wine simply called just like the winery name, Teso la Monja. And apparently this wine is so good and the reputation of the good and family is so great and that they brought the store project to selling and pricing this wine above everyone else in Spain, even higher than an old Spanish icon that has been making the most famous Spanish wine for decades.
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Like Vega Sicilia, or even a more recent project like Dominio de Pingus, which is also become a cult wine in Spain. They've been making wine for 30 years. It was the most expensive Spanish wines, now Teso la Monja is. This is how this wine, unheard of some 15 years ago it didn't even exist, is now the most expensive Spanish wine of them all, selling at an average global price of 1200 dollars a bottle depending on the vintage, while the second most expensive Pingus sells at around $1,000.
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And now you know about the most expensive wine. I hope you enjoyed today's wine story with more of a more casual way of talking about wine. I hope you enjoyed it. And I will see you soon in the wonderful world of wine. Cheers.
