Wine Pick Of The Week: 2004 Torres Coronas Tempranillo ($11)

Torres arguably is the most important winery in Spain. It certainly is the largest.

While Spanish wines have recently been discovered after a decade-long renaissance, Torres has been a household name for as long as I can remember. Since 1991, the company has been run by Miguel Torres Jr., the sixth generation to take the helm. He is a low-key, hard-working visionary who has kept the company on the cutting edge of quality innovation.

His father, Miguel Sr., was a tough old bird and feared by many. He took over the winery at the age of 23 when his father passed away and through sheer determination built the winery into a powerhouse. During the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, the winery was bombed to smithereens, but he rebuilt it. In the early 1940s, he traveled to the United States to sell his wines, taking advantage of the fact that France was now controlled by Hitler and unable to provide wine. I visited Don Miguel during the Reagan administration (he was a big fan) and he kept repeating how he was the same age as the president and showed that he was just as spry by literally making me run to keep up with him and by doing gymnastic-style dips between two handrails.

The Torres portfolio is massive and Coronas is part of a group of entry-level wines that are consistently some of the best values anywhere. It is made almost entirely from the tempranillo grape, which is a Spanish native variety and, along with garnacha, one of the workhorse red grapes of Spain. Here we have a big, juicy wine drenched in red fruit flavors that remind me of cherries and plums, along with whiffs of toasty oak and earth. I like the wine's lovely cocoa powder soft tannins and how it is so nicely balanced between its weight, texture and bright acidity. To find the wine, contact Noble Wines at 206-326-5274.

-- Richard Kinssies