What Robert Parker “did” to wine is by now, regardless of whether you’re pro or con, a truism. He favors big over subtle, fruit over earth, ripeness over restraint. Those sorts of qualities are easier for the majority of wine drinkers to appreciate. His influence has grown so great that wines the world over have fallen prey to “Parkerization” — technology-aided vinification techniques designed to garner high scores from Parker’s Wine Advocate empire.

I stand in awe of Parker, though my own predilections don’t align with his. Because I usually prefer quieter, gentler wines, I’m happy there’s currently an un-Parker movement. Within those regions that have been most susceptible to Parker’s impact — California, Argentina, Australia, Spain — many vintners are now producing wines using indigenous and/or lesser-known varietals, with lower alcohol levels and higher acidity, intended for food accompaniment rather than awards shows. It’s not a slam against Parker to assert that there ought to be alternative ways to claim a wine is “great.”

Spain is a good place to explore this further. It’s hot there and relatively easy to produce Parker-friendly wines bursting with lionhearted fruit, knee-buckling alcohol and eye-watering tannins. Jorge Ordonez, the legendary importer of Spanish wines who has done so much to expand international appreciation for the variety of wines Spain produces, shares Parker’s bigger-is-better tastes. But there are an increasing number of terroir-based wines being made, brought to us by a new generation of importers who favor nimbler, more nuanced expressions of Spanish soil, climate and fruit.

Vinos Libres, a New York-based importer just brought to Maine by National Distributors, has recently re-ignited my passion for Spanish wine. Founder Carlos Hubner-Arteta explicitly diverges from Parker and Ordonez, telling me, “Younger people, the future of wine, are foodies, and they want food wines.”

Noting that in Rioja alone there are more than 300 different clones of Tempranillo, Hubner-Arteta is fascinated by the species and diversity in Spain. He emphasizes the younger wines that more clearly transmit the purity and clarity of the fruit itself — characteristics that have too often been masked by Spain’s traditional utilization of long oak-aging before release. “Every region in Spain makes unoaked wine,” he told me, “but you’d never know it from most of the Spanish wine available in this country.”

Another quality of these wines worth mentioning is their sources in old-vine grapes. In such hot, dry regions with such poor soils, only old vines grow long and deep enough underground to reach the necessary nutrients, a struggle responsible for so much of the unique flavor they draw into their grapes. Without old vines, producers are often forced to irrigate, which keeps vines alive but dilutes flavors. No Vinos Libres producers irrigate their vineyards.

These are clean, pure and driving wines that balance Spain’s wine traditions with a lively engagement with the world’s wine future.

Sumarroca Ya Cuve 23 Brut Cava non vintage, Catalunya, $14. Rare for Cava, this is made by the estate-grown grapes’ growers themselves. Supremely fresh, it’s granitic, precise and lemony, a counter to so much overly frothy, overly white-fruit Cava.

Luis Alegre Blanco 2010, Rioja, $13. A serious, spicy, weighty white, from 65-year-old-vines Viura and Malvasia with three months of lees contact. Lots of interesting fruit — pears, white peach, a touch of banana cream pie — gives way to a tremendous acidic kick on the finish. A singular introduction to white Rioja.

Vin Bierzo Bocovi Tinto 2010, Galicia, $9. Most sub-$10 Spanish wine lands with a thud. This, amazingly, is very, very pretty, an unconventional blend of the region’s classically bright, lean, mineral-rich Mencia grape with 30 percent Garnacha for juicy yum quotient. A terrific everyday table wine (in Galicia they sell it in 15-liter bottles) at 12 percent alcohol, it’s got a little of everything: raspberries, roses, cinnamon, cocoa powder, char.

Casa Mariol Negre non vintage, Catalunya, $10. Speaking of those 300 Tempranillos, this red is roughly two-thirds Ull de Llebre, an indigenous Tempranillo, with the remainder split between Garnatxa and — be still my heart — Samso, or what you and I call old-vines Carignan. I’m a little bit insane for old-vines Carignan. (Sing along: “Me and old-vines Carignan, sitting in a tree, k-i-ss-i-n-g … first comes earth, then strawberry, then a cinnamon-laced dose of minerality!”) It’s soft but branchy, and ideal with pizza, sloppy joes, whatever.

Luis Alegre Koden 2009, Rioja, $13. This is different. It’s from Rioja Alavesa, the Basque Rioja with chalk and clay soils, rather than the more common Rioja Alta. Much more feminine and elegant than most Rioja, it is lightly aged in used oak and comes across like a village Burgundy, with deep Bing cherry palate and minerals that move from pleasantly mucky to zippy-bright toward the end.

Joe Appel works at Rosemont Market. His blog, soulofwine.com, continues the conversation, and he can be reached at: soulofwine.appel@gmail.com

 

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