While this series had a couple of early starts, it truly came into being two years ago, in 2023. It was something created to “celebrate” the general rise in prices across Spain, but it seems that it became unfortunately prescient in seeing that much of the world has become very unaffordable to the majority of people. Thus, we see a new edition of “La Cuesta de Enero 2025” which picks out 15 wines for 2025 that come in a budget-friendly format for this, the darkest moment of the year, and for those who dutifully wish not to partake in Dry January.
“La cuesta de enero” roughly translates from Spanish as “uphill January”. The reason should be obvious as most everyone is broke after the holidays in Spain given that there are essentially two gift periods of Christmas and Three Kings.
Beyond the spend and purge cycle of gift buying, it’s the start of the calendar year and all kinds of things increase in cost like heating, electricity, postal fees, trains, metros, etc.–and this despite a number of government rebates in place that are keeping things nearly tenable but are set to dissapear this year. Basically, everything you actually need suddenly costs more and this is why it’s an uphill climb out of the seemingly happy pit which holiday celebrations tricked you into believing was actual life.
In past editions, there was an effort to create a list with wines under 12€ or so. That’s proven to be rather tricky and at this point, it’s just not correct given that the costs for producing wine have risen considerably for winemakers in these post-pandemic years. Given that, the range of wines is now from 7.50€ to just under 20€ (including two from DOQ Priorat!), this upper end being for those who want to ‘splurge’, although there are the larger reports with a tremendous number of options if that is what one is looking for. Again, your Dry January kilometerage may vary and more power to you for whatever you choose.
All wines in the list are from across Spain and Southern France with a minimum of 2/3 stars as per the Hudin.com range ratings which means that no matter how much you spend, absolutely any of these wines will give you a great deal of pleasure. These wines were also largely culled from the recent reviews in the reports of: DO Terra Alta, DOQ Priorat, DO Montsant, AOC Cairanne, and DOC Rioja.
Do note that the prices listed in the tasting report are the local prices given that final export prices will vary wildly depending upon your market.
Please see the full “La Cuesta de Enero 2025” and may your uphill climb be the least inclined as it possibly can.
