When autumn sets in, we tend to roll with the changes. We button up to take on the chill in the air and adjust our eating habits accordingly. It’s a period defined by a natural pivot that deserves to be taken full advantage of, especially from a food and drink standpoint.
Enter Marqués de Cáceres, a family-owned winery rooted in Spain’s celebrated winemaking tradition. With vineyards in both Rioja and Rueda Cristina Forner is also shining a light on Ribera del Duero and other top D.O.s of Spain, the winery specializes in balanced, food-friendly wines—offerings that do particularly well alongside fall fare. In fact, there’s hardly a portfolio more suitable for the comforting spices, warmer flavors, and earthy tones of the dishes associated with the coming season.
Marqués de Cáceres has been part of the dining table for generations, delivering deftly made wines that not only complement the menu but elevate the entire experience. Wines like these, from vibrant Verdejo to red blends bursting with fruit and spice, can take a typical Sunday dinner and turn it into a meal to remember.
The Winery
Founded in Rioja in 1970 by Enrique Forner, Marqués de Cáceres helped shape a new era of Spanish winemaking. After years in Bordeaux, Forner returned to Spain with a modern vision for Rioja, combining French winemaking techniques with the character of the region and helping bring Spanish wine to a broader international audience.
Today, the winery is led by Cristina Forner, the fifth generation of her family in the wine business, who took over from her father in 2007. Under her leadership, Marqués de Cáceres has continued to evolve while remaining deeply connected to its Spanish heritage.
That evolution has taken the winery beyond Rioja into other leading Spanish regions, including Rueda, where Marqués de Cáceres established a second winery dedicated to bright, expressive white wines, particularly Verdejo. Today, Cristina Forner is also shining a light on Ribera del Duero and other top D.O.s of Spain, continuing the family’s tradition of innovation and exploration.
Across its portfolio, Marqués de Cáceres combines quality with approachability, working with signature Spanish grapes such as Tempranillo and Verdejo. The wines are distinctive, expressive, and known for their balance, structure, complexity, and longevity.
From fresh, vibrant whites to elegant, structured reds, the portfolio offers versatile wines that pair naturally with late-summer and early-fall fare.
The Wines and Pairings
Consider the Marqués de Cáceres Cava, an approachable yet festive sparkling wine teeming with apple and brioche notes. It’s made with a trio of local grapes (Xarello, Macabeo, Parellada) from quarter-century old vines planted in Penedès, the home of Catalonian Cava. Making the wine is a delicate and involved process, from fermenting the free-run juice early on to a secondary fermentation that takes place in an underground cellar where the wine spends some ample time on the lees. While balanced and refreshing as an aperitif, the wine is all the better poured alongside grilled shellfish, patatas bravas, fresh pasta dishes, and hard cheese.
The Marqués de Cáceres Verdejo is a bright white wine sourced from a pair of Rueda villages in La Seca and Serrada. There, amid a Continental influence that creates the perfect diurnal growing conditions (hot days, cool nights), the Verdejo grapes flourish. There’s tension in the wine, at once intense yet full of finesse. The fruit is harvested at night and fermented slowly and coolly, resulting in a wine that is lively, palate-pleasing, and teeming with citrus and white fruit notes. Allow it to take dishes like ceviche, grilled vegetables, and roasted chicken to the next level of enjoyment.
Marqués de Cáceres Rosé is a gorgeous persimmon-hued rosé style wine made from cooler-climate Tempranillo. In the glass, you’re reminded of a sun-kissed summer but on the palate, there’s more than enough complexity to match the harvest time meal with juicy raspberry and subtle herbal notes neatly layered atop a silky structure. Bright, red fruit-driven, and lengthy, the Rosé is an ideal ally for chorizo, barbecue, paella, or tangy cheeses.
The estate’s red styles are all produced in the Rioja region. The Marqués de Cáceres Crianza is a fine example of the younger style, crafted from fruit grown in both the Rioja Alta and Rioja Alavesa using deliberately low yield vine training practices. Here, Tempranillo plays a starring role, blended with small amounts of Graciano and Garnacha Tinta. The unhurried winemaking process sees up to 20 days of maceration, ideal for teasing out maximum color, aromatic complexity, and a denseness on the palate. It pours an eye-catching ruby red and affords alluring notes of black fruit, oak, licorice, and subtle hints of balsamic vinegar and mint that make it tremendously versatile with a variety of cuisines. The wine is as suitable for special occasions as it is a sprawling fall harvest feast and. Marqués de Cácares Crianza pairs well with everything from grilled rack of lamb, homemade pizza, wood-fired vegetables to ratatouille (great way to use up that bounty of summer squash!) or smoked pork (and, of course, good company).
Finally, the Marqués de Cáceres Reserva is a wine that shows lasting layers of black fruit, clove, and toasted oak and is the product of 20 months in the barrel and another two years aged in the bottle. It’s a showcase of the magic Tempranillo can create when grown and crafted in its native home. Serve it with your favorite cut of steak, a heaping portion of Bolognese, or a creamy mushroom risotto.
Hardly anywhere else on the wine map boasts the sense of discovery, value, food-friendliness, and age-old pedigree as Rioja and Rueda. The wines of Marqués de Cáceres represent all of those things, backed by a seasoned and experienced winemaking family set in one of the longest-standing wine production areas in all of Europe.
Fall may bring changes, especially on your table, but the best way to take in a proper feast is with Marqués de Cáceres, a reliable fixture in the world winemaking community. The brand’s roots dig deep, giving rise to invigorating bubblies, whites, nuanced pinks, and resounding reds fine-tuned for the fare of the season.
This article is sponsored by Marqués de Cáceres.
