Ribera del Duero  This barren plateau between Valladolid and
Aranda, self-styled roast lamb capital of the world, is
currently producing some of Spain's most admired red wines, to
the continuing amazement of the peasant farmers who have lived
on the banks of the Duero river for generations. Downstream and
over the Portuguese border, their counterparts farm port grapes
in what is known as the Douro Valley. But whereas port has been
famous for three centuries, the wines of Ribera del Duero are a
relatively recent phenomenon.  Only at the end of the 19th
century did one producer, now called Vega Sicilia, gain some
sort of recognition for the intensity of its wines. And it was
not until the mid 1980s that another, an agricultural machinist
Alejandro Fernández of Bodegas Pesquera, managed to establish
the region as a viable source of high-quality, long-lived,
concentrated, deep-coloured wines. The DO classification was not
granted until 1982 and since then there has been an invasion of
investors keen to transform