More than this, Somontano acquires a highly personal touch thanks to the wide range of grape varieties (13 native and foreign varieties) that can go into its making and the equally wide range of other wines with which it can be blended. All result in a light fruitiness and acidity, making each type an especially refreshing and delicate wine.

The reds are typically full-coloured, with a high tannin content and good acidity that allows long ageing. The whites are described as agile and fresh, full-bodied and pale in colour. The rosés are characterised by a wide range of colours, and are fruity, fresh and mild in flavour. Fermentation takes place in stainless-steel tanks. Increasingly, the young crianzas and more mature reservas are aged equally in the bottle and in oak casks. Either way, the ageing must take a minimum of two calendar years from the 1^st of December of the year of the harvest. The top-quality Gran Reservas are aged for 60 months in the case of reds and 48 months for the whites and rosés.

The wine growing region of Somontano itself is tucked away in the foothills of the Aragonese Pyrenees and takes its name from the district of the same name. It’s a small district, with a capital, Barbastro, having a population of 16,000 inhabitants, yet still qualifying as Aragón’s fifth most populous city.

The area occupies a scenically attractive transition between the Pyrenean foothills and the Ebro valley. Like the Italian name Piedmont, Somontano means ‘under the mountain’. The vineyards are set in lush, green, steeply terraced terrain, at altitudes of between 350-650 metres, in the valleys of the rivers that run down north to south to join the Ebro. Soils are high in sandstone and clay content – hence their bright red colour – and close to the rivers they include alluvial material. The limestone content makes these ideal vineyard soils. They are low in fertility, have remarkable permeability and are notably healthy.

The area’s impressive river valleys and gorges are riddled with caves and tunnels that date back to the Stone Age. Many of these have been found to contain cave paintings and hand-tools from that period.

As in other areas of Spain, winemaking was consolidated here by the Romans and, in medieval times, by the monasteries. Due to its proximity to the French border, until well into the 20^th century, the majority of the wines made in the region acquired particular characteristics, which have been preserved. In the late 1980s, after winning DO status, new wineries emerged and planted imported varieties such as Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon. The Regulatory Council is now attempting to protect native varieties and to recover others which had fallen into disuse, such as the Parraleta. Some experimental blends have been spectacularly successful.

So, what do the experts have to say about Somontano? One American connoisseur of fine wines recently wrote about her tasting of the current offering from the vinery Bodega Pirineos in Somontano. It’s a fairly typical vinery, since Pirineos is doing its best to reintroduce the local red wine vine varieties such as Moristel and the light-bodied but perfumed Parraleta, together with non-local varieties.

This particular tasting was of a wine called Montesierra, in Pirineos’ “serious” range, a Mesache Tinto. Although the bodega also makes some special cuvees, the Mesache is the name of their new range of wines for drinking young, the word local dialect word for muchacho, or youngster – the idea being that they can be drunk young but offer some complexity too. The Mesacheis a blend of the old and new in Somontano: 50 per cent old vine Garnacha Tinta, 20 per cent each of youngish Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon plus 10 per cent Parraleta. The Parraleta vines vary in age, with some more than 100 years old. The four varieties are vinified separately to maximise their inherent individuality and are blended just before short ageing in new American oak. According to the taster, the oak is not a taste-able characteristic but has deepened the flavour and given the wine the stability to hang around for up to two years after the vintage. The wine can be drunk straightaway and is fairly widely distributed – in the UK, Oddbins, for example, currently offer a Pirineos Mesache Tinto for a pre-tax, merchant’s price of just £5.10 a bottle (plus around £5 a case delivery charge).

It’s described as a “lively” red, “far from heavy but … packed full of juicy fruit (perhaps dominated by the Garnacha character) but with layers of cherry and a beginning, middle and an end to its structure”. It can be enjoyed at a wide range of temperatures. When tasted by a larger group of professionals in London as part of a demonstration of Cutting edge Spain, it is said to have gone down very well.

The white, a blend of equal proportions of late-picked, old Maccabeo, Chardonnay and Gewurztraminer (a grape that does notably well in Somontano) is also worth looking out for. Both reds and whites have so far been stoppered with Neocork, a synthetic stopper that is apparently more flexible than most and therefore better at being put back in the bottleneck. Pirineos’s Rosado (without the Mesache name), made from equal portions Merlot and Cabernet, a small proportion of the Cabernet being barrel fermented for texture, has been voted best Spanish Rosado and is also widely available for around £5 a bottle.