Owing to the screen size of your device, you may obtain a better viewing experience by rotating your device a quarter-turn (to get the so-called “panorama” screen view).
owlcroft logo
An Owlcroft Company
web site.


 Click to 
 email us. 


If you like this site,
please post a link to it!

This is…

That Useful Wine Site

Search, or just roll your cursor over the colored boxes farther below.
Advertisements appear before actual Search results;
click the “x” to dismiss Search-results block.

  Advertisement:


  Site navigation:

  Advertisement:


  Site navigation:

The Macabeo Grape


Quick page jumps:


About Macabeo

(Synonyms: Charas Blanc, Lardot, Macabeu, Maccabéo, Maccabeu, Viura.)

Background

Map showing Vilafranca del Penedes in Spain.

Macabeo is an old white-wine grape most likely originating in the Vilafranca del Penedès region of Catalunya in Spain. It is almost equally common to find it called “Viura” as “Macabeo”; we here follow Jancis Robinson in her encyclopedic book Wine Grapes in referring to it as Macabeo. Quite often, the wines will be founbd labelled simply “White Rioja” (or the Spanish equivalent “Rioja Blanco”), but recent changes in Spanish wine laws now allow white Riojas to contain as little as 51% Viura (as it is called there), so if looking at such a bottle, take care to read the back label.

Today, Macabeo is grown and vinified on both sides of the Pyrenees Mountains: in northern Spain and in southern France. The French production is much smaller than the Spanish (which is mostly the Rioja region), but the wines from there (the Roussillon region) are quite well-made.

Stylistically, Macabeo is all over the map. The modern tendency is toward stainless-steel fermentation tanks, producing crisp, fresh floral wines; but there is also a significant amount made in an older fashion, using later-harvested grapes and a deal of oak-barrel aging to produce big nutty/honied wines. It is probably well worth becoming acquainted with both styles.

Factoid: Macabeo is an important ingredient in the famed Cava sparkling wines of Spain.

Return to the page top. ↑


Some Descriptions of Macabeo Wines

Return to the page top. ↑


Some Macabeos to Try

(About this list.)

There are tons of more or less decent Macabeo/Viura bottlings out there, but rise above “decent” to at least fairly good and the selections—at reasonable prices, there being a lot of costly bottlings—shrinks fast. Here is what we could come up with.


Alegre y Valgañón Rioja Blanco

• This wine’s Wine Searcher “Reviews” page.
• This wine’s CellarTracker review pages.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by Wine Searcher.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by 1000 Corks.



Frontonio “Microcosmico” Macabeo

• This wine’s Wine Searcher “Reviews” page.
• This wine’s CellarTracker review pages.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by Wine Searcher.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by 1000 Corks.



Sierra de Toloño Rioja Blanco

• This wine’s Wine Searcher “Reviews” page.
• This wine’s CellarTracker review pages.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by Wine Searcher.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by 1000 Corks.



Ananto Macabeo

• This wine’s Wine Searcher “Reviews” page.
    CellarTracker’s has two listings for this wine, one of which erroneously includes some Bobal—a red wine— entries:
• This wine’s CellarTracker review pages.
• This wine’s CellarTracker review pages.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by Wine Searcher.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by 1000 Corks.



Valserrano Rioja Blanco

• This wine’s Wine Searcher “Reviews” page.
• This wine’s CellarTracker review pages.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by Wine Searcher.
• Retail offers of this wine listed by 1000 Corks.

Return to the page top. ↑


For a Splurge

We could find no reasonably available Macabeo wines better enough than those listed above as to justify a “splurge” price.

Return to the page top. ↑



  Advertisement:


  

  Advertisement:


  



Disclaimers  |  Privacy Policy

owl logo This site is one of The Owlcroft Company family of web sites. Please click on the link (or the owl) to see a menu of our other diverse user-friendly, helpful sites. Pair Networks logo Like all our sites, this one is hosted at the highly regarded Pair Networks, whom we strongly recommend. We invite you to click on the Pair link or logo for more information on hosting by a first-class service.
(Note: All Owlcroft systems run on Ubuntu Linux and we heartily recommend it to everyone—click on the link for more information).

All content copyright © 2024 The Owlcroft Company
(excepting quoted material, which is believed to be Fair Use).

This web page is strictly compliant with the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) Protocol v1.0 (Transitional) and the W3C Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Protocol v3 — because we care about interoperability. Click on the logos below to test us!



This page was last modified on Saturday, 30 October 2021, at 11:26 pm Pacific Time.