At some point towards the tail end of the 20th century, ‘cooperative’ became a dirty word in progressive Spanish winemaking circles. At their zenith, close to three-quarters of production in the country’s winemaking heartlands was represented by las cooperativas vitivinícolas – wine producers of widely varying sizes, owned and controlled by their grower-members.
But by the end of the 20th century, co-ops were considered an embarrassing anachronism by many in the industry. They were seen as a throwback to the bad old days of Spanish wine, before the post-Franco transition to democracy and Spain’s accession to the EEC (now EU) in 1986.
This political transformation ushered in a bold new era in which ambitious, entrepreneurial, independent producers changed the way Spanish wine was made, sold and discussed. At a time of rapid change, co-ops came to stand for all that was retrogressive – a reputation they’ve struggled to shake off to this day.
According to trade association Cooperativas Agro-alimentarias, there are currently 420 cooperatives in the Spanish wine sector, accounting for €1.2 billion of wine sales each year. Among these, there are certainly still examples that fit the caricature of struggling businesses making ends meet on minuscule margins made from selling vast quantities on the bulk market.
But that’s very far from the whole picture. During my visits to Spanish wine regions over the past two decades, I have developed a growing appreciation of the possibilities offered by the cooperative approach to wine production. It’s often the local co-op that’s doing most to further research into winemaking, viticulture or local varieties, or that’s working hardest to implement sustainability targets – environmental as well as economic. No less importantly, they do all this while playing a vital role in tackling some of Spain’s most intractable social problems.
Marcelo Ruesca, one of Grandes Vinos’ many wine-growers
Real social impact
We’ll get to the many improvements in wine quality (and the superb wines) made by some of my favourite co-ops in Spain in a moment. But it’s the social impact that marks out the cooperative from other business models, in what I believe is Europe’s most dynamic wine-producing country.
The co-op can play a significant role in reversing what is known as España vacía (‘empty Spain’), the depopulation of the country’s largely agricultural interior and one of the most pressing socio-political issues in contemporary Spain.
The figures are alarming. According to government statistics cited by Spanish daily newspaper El País in 2022, a decades-long flight from the hinterlands to Spain’s urban centres and coastal tourist resorts, and to other parts of the EU, has led to a situation in which 70% of the country is occupied by a mere 10% of the population. Some 42% of Spanish municipalities are considered at critical risk of depopulation.
There is a kind of death-spiral logic to the chronic underinvestment in local services and development that leads to an exodus of young people looking for work. This leads to further cuts in services and an ageing population, which makes it even more unattractive to younger generations… and so it goes.
The process is felt acutely in wine regions where cultivation is only possible by hand: old bush vines in Calatayud in the north or Jumilla in the southeast, or tiny mixed-agriculture plots in Ribeiro or Rías Baixas in the far northwest, in which pergola-grown vines share space with kitchen gardens. Often, it’s only the prospect of selling to the cooperative – and access to its resources – that provides sufficient incentive for these producers, many of whom have the tiniest of plots, to keep going and stay in the region at all.
But today’s leading cooperatives understand that in order to have enduring social impact, they need to make wines that sell at sufficiently high prices to fund investment in their vineyards and facilities, and to pay the sort of returns to their member-growers that allow them in turn to make a viable living.
Terraced vines in the red clay soils of Celler Masroig in the Montsant region in Catalonia
Northern & central
There are many more of these forward-thinking and creative cooperatives in Spain today than I have space to highlight here. One of those I’ve been most impressed with recently is Sociedad Cooperativa Vitivinícola Arousana, based near Meaño in Pontevedra. A relative newcomer in the O Salnés area, it has become the largest co-op in Rías Baixas, with more than 400 members. In 2005, it launched with the intention of providing a living to small producers, with an average of 0.5ha each, ‘who wanted to take their production to a professional level’. The co-op had a big hit with Paco & Lola, its smartly packaged, good value and widely accessible range of Albariños (and a Mencía).
On the opposite side of northern Spain, in Aragón, the wine-growers’ union Grandes Vinos has done a remarkable job of changing attitudes to DO Cariñena and the intense, wild wines made from the eponymous grape variety (also known as Mazuelo, or Carignan in France) since bringing together five local cooperatives representing 700 growers in 1997, the whole concern being operated under modern commercial management systems.
Meanwhile, representing 150 families and 950ha at up to a dizzying 1,100m in elevation, San Alejandro was founded in 1962. It has done much to improve the reputation of DO Calatayud, also in Aragón, not least with the exquisitely silky Garnachas produced from its members’ best plots as part of Cuevas de Arom, the imaginative joint venture with Bodegas Frontonio, the shared project of Fernando Mora MW and Mario López.
In the centre of the country, collaborations with next-generation viñateros have also been driving change in the Sierra de Gredos mountains near Madrid. Bodega Cristo del Humilladero in Cadalso has benefited from the winemaking guidance of the Gredos Garnacha masters Daniel Landi and Fernando García, while Jésus Maria Soto and former technical director Bárbara Requejo of Cebreros-based Soto Manrique have brought their expertise to the Cebreros cooperative El Galayo. In 2020, Requejo set up her own concern, Las Pedreras, producing wines in Villanueva de Avila with her husband Guzmán Sánchez, chef-owner of local restaurant La Querencia.
Bodegas Frontonio’s Fernando Mora MW, who is working with the San Alejandro cooperative. Credit: Gabi Orte / Chilindron
Close to the med
To the east, near the Catalonian coast, the rugged neighbouring territories of Montsant and Priorat are respectively well-served by the 107 year-old, 300-member Celler Masroig and Vinícola del Priorat, whose 140 member families farm tiny, old-vine plots across 210ha on insanely steep slopes in El Lloar, La Vilella Baixa, La Vilella Alta and Gratallops.
Finally, further down the coast in the southeast, Grupo Coviñas in Utiel-Requena has played a vital role in turning around the quality and reputation of the long-disregarded local red variety Bobal, while also taking part in important educational initiatives promoted by the DO. And, in Yecla a little further south, Bodegas La Purísima has long been synonymous with intense but balanced Monastrell reds (and surprisingly vivid Sauvignon Blanc and Macabeo whites) from old-vine plots at around 700m on the Murcia plateau. With a young winemaking and management team at the helm, these ‘Old Hands’ (to borrow the name of one of this co-op’s brands), are among the vanguard of producers proving that cooperative is no longer a dirty word.
How the cooperatives work – and how they came to be
Having emerged in Spain during the late 19th and early 20th century, cooperatives began to dominate the Spanish wine scene from the time of the Spanish Civil War (in the late 1930s), when an isolated Spain’s struggling economy made it difficult for grape-growers to attract a viable price on the open market.
By forming co-ops, the growers were able to spread risk and costs, becoming, in the founding words of quality-conscious Rueda cooperative Bodega Cuatro Rayas, ‘not just bigger, but stronger’. They strengthened their ability to negotiate higher prices for grapes and wines sold in bulk to private producers and, in time, to make and market wines themselves.
Sorting grapes at Bodega Cuatro Rayas in La Seca
Arguably, the co-op model worked in an age during which wine was essentially an everyday staple in Spain, consumed in vast quantities – 66 litres per capita at its peak in 1964, as cited in a May 2010 report by JM Martínez-Carrión and FJ Medina-Albalaejo on the evolution of the Spanish wine sector from 1950 to 2008 – at a time when there was limited regard for quality.
The same report showed that by the early 21st century, Spanish wine consumption was a third of what it was. Export markets were increasingly competitive and both domestic and international consumers were becoming more discerning and had more available income. The strengths of the cooperatives (their democratic structure and the social safety net of being, in some cases, a buyer of last resort) became, in many cases, weaknesses.
Dynamically different
Critics would argue that the co-op model encourages lenience on lazy growers, who sense they can offload their crop regardless of quality. It’s true that the sometimes Byzantine ownership structures – which can run to more than 1,000 growers – can make for slow decision-making and a stale approach to winemaking. But there is great opportunity – and both social and environmental value – in quality at scale.
There is no single, off-the-peg model for a Spanish wine cooperative. They range in size from a handful of producers to several thousand; La Mancha’s Virgen de las Viñas now lays claim to more than 3,000 wine-growers.
And there are as many co-op management approaches as there are political systems. Some will put almost every aspect of day-to-day running to a vote; most will hand over control to an elected management, with winemaking and marketing carried out independently by a long-term team, just like a privately owned winery.
Incentivising quality
Most importantly, when it comes to ensuring good-quality grapes, cooperatives have a wide range of tools at their disposal. Some will have a hands-on viticultural team that is in constant contact with their member- growers, with powers to impose whatever viticultural techniques and timings they believe are necessary. Others will give the growers more latitude, providing incentives with a pay scale under which the price rises according to the quality produced.
