Ribera is Spain’s answer to Burgundy and the cradle of some of the best wines in the world, writes Pedro Ballesteros Torres MW. Here, terroir is everything… Wine lovers know that Burgundy is a classic region that delivers an amazing variety of red wines mostly from one grape variety, thanks to its diverse terroirs. Those terroirs are defined in a complex legal system that sets up a hierarchy for the land, classifying it in categories going from plain Burgundy to Grand Cru. Imagine now that Burgundy were just one appellation, with no legal hierarchy of terroirs. Individual producers would define the terroirs; all terroirs would appear the same in the labels. Anyway, the diversity and the quality ladder would still be there, but you will need to find it out in different ways… This is Ribera del Duero. Ribera is the cradle of some of the best wines in the world. Instead of matching an archetypal profile definition, the top Ribera wines are virtuoso interpretations of diverse terroirs and a single grape variety, occasionally blended but always dominant, Tempranillo. While Burgundy follows a North-South axis, Ribera occupies a 115 km long stretch of land, following an East-West axis. The climate is continental, with harsh winters, hot summers and high daily temperature variation. It is a dry area with very diverse soils, including clay, sand, limestone, marl and chalk. It consists of three distinctive regions.