Key Points
- Grape varieties: Tinta de Toro, Garnacha, Verdejo, Albillo Real
- Hectares planted: 8,000 Ha
- Grape growers: 981
- Wineries: 63
About Toro
With 80% of its vineyards in the province of Zamora and 20% in Valladolid, square-shaped Toro spans the Duero river valley in north-west Spain on the way to Galicia (imagine a line between Madrid and La Coruña and it’s halfway). In winemaking terms, Toro is ¨the other DO on the Duero¨, sandwiched between the more famous Ribera del Duero to the east and the Douro region just across the border in Portugal.
It’s another of Spain’s historical wine regions, with a winemaking history and culture which goes back to medieval times, although it was only made an official DO in the late 1980s.
The geography of Toro
Toro is fairly wild and remote, characterised by a continental climate with extremely cold winters and long hours of sunlight in the summer which helps the grapes to ripen perfectly. The region’s signature Tinta de Toro (a local variant of Tempranillo) vines grow at between 600 and 750 metres above sea level, and traditionally they went into the region’s big, powerful red wines.
The grapes of Toro
In recent years, the profile of Toro’s wines has shifted significantly as new projects have sprung up with a focus on the region’s rich store of old, ungrafted vines which thrive in the Toro’s sandy, phylloxera-resistant soils. This rich vineyard heritage has encouraged famous estates from Ribera del Duero, Rioja or even Bordeaux to buy vineyards and bottle wines under DO Toro.