Spain
On the Good Path
For a quarter century, we have sought out anything-but-cookie-cutter wines with a story and soul that offer the best possible value, often from underdog regions. These wines are irreplicable, so true they are to their place of origin. For some time, we stuck to the Australian identity, hanging our hat for about fifteen years on the stories of the zany winemakers from down under. But as we narrowed our why, we realized it’s not about sticking to any one place on the globe. Vine Street is about the pursuit for honest, site-specific wines that offer the greatest value on earth. And as that raison d’être became clear to us, a whole world of wine opened up. It led us to South Africa, which has grown significantly in volume since we started, and later Argentina, a country that is singing a beautiful new tune. As we released our grip on any one identity, we’ve gotten closer to the acme of our passion. Enter: Spain.
Spain came to us much like the rest of our portfolio – by chance. For some time, Ronnie had been noticing praise for a brand called Bideona by his friends and critics. Coming from Rioja Alavesa, the smallest and northernmost of Rioja’s three sub-regions, Bideona intrigued Ronnie for the new Rioja origin story it seeks to tell. For one, it defies the narrative that oak-aged Rioja is the sole tradition. Its model is to vinify tiny plots of land, about three quarters of an acre or one third the size of a soccer pitch, prioritizing place over process. This philosophy that is taking hold in northern Rioja is the same one that we saw in Piedmont 15 years ago or Burgundy 40 years ago. Being at the cusp of this change, Bideona illuminated the ah-ha light bulb in Ronnie’s head…
Simultaneously, Bideona was in search of a U.S. importer. A brief phone call was all it took for us to realize that we’re aligned in telling the next-gen story. And so, in early 2025, we launched Spain with four brands: Bideona (Rioja Alavesa), Península Vinicultores (Bizkaiko Txakolina and Sierras de Gata y Gredos), Mayela (Rioja Alavesa), and Mesta (Castilla-La Mancha). These brands are all under the direction of Andreas Kubach, a passionate MW raised in Brazil and Spain by German parents, and his partners Sam Harrop MW, a New Zealander, and Jesús Cantarero, a Spaniard. Their international backgrounds have certainly shaped their ethos as they look to break the ceiling of interest for terroir, caused when winemakers focus solely on winemaking and aging and omit place.
Bideona’s founders are leaders in Rioja when it comes to articulating territory in a Burgundian village philosophy. They join a vanguard of winemakers making honest wines that rethink traditional processes, and they do so while swimming upstream. After all, industrialization is implicit in the fact that Spain vies with Italy and France each year for top wine producing country in the world. That’s not the story we’re interested in telling, and thankfully, wine critics and enthusiasts are starting to realize that – like in Italy or France – there are thoughtful, balanced, artisanal wines to be found in Spain, too. New York Times wine critic Eric Asimov calls Spain “the most dynamic wine-producing country in the world.” He writes, “Nowhere else do I see such a concentration of thoughtful, talented and inventive winemakers from all parts of a country offering such a profusion of exceptional wines that are both true to tradition yet innovative.”
Freshness, minerality, and drinkability – terms that didn’t exist for Spanish winemakers in the 90s – are what now define our foray into the Land of Cervantes. There has never been a more interesting time to discover the new Spain.
