At 3:40 p.m. last Wednesday, lunch service was long over at most Manhattan restaurants, but at Thomas Keller’s Per Se at the Time Warner Center, a luncheon honoring “Five Superstar Spanish Winemakers” was only at its midpoint.

We, the 60-odd guests of the Spanish Trade Commission, had washed down a lunch that might have sated Boss Tweed, with eight red wines and one sweet white wine, all intense, all made by the five attending “superstars.” And before we even began eating, we had tasted 10 additional red wines by these Spanish winemakers. Like the lunch pours, these wines were gleamingly dark in the glass and intensely, densely fruited in the mouth. This six-hour marathon was a crash course in gauging the cutting edge of the dynamic Spanish wine world.

For most of the last century, Spanish table wines had no cutting edge. Spain’s winemakers, even as they presided over the largest vineyard acreage of any country, were mostly asleep at the wheel. The only class of distinguished red table wines, made from the indigenous Tempranillo, came from Rioja. The best of these might be called graceful, but rarely brilliant. In neighboring Ribera del Duero, a single wine called Vega Sicilia had long excelled.

Winds of change arrived in the early 1980s when Alejandro Fernandez, a former agricultural machinery builder, created Pesquera, a wine that took Tempranillo to an unheard-of level of freshness, intensity, and complexity. Like Vega Sicilia, it was made in Ribera del Duero. Soon, other formerly lethargic wine regions, including Priorat, Toro, Bierzo, and La Mancha, were revived by a newly energized cadre of winemakers. Rather than create new wines from new plantings, they preferred to identify old untended vineyards that needed the equivalent of a prince’s kiss to revive.

Mr. Fernandez, the eldest of the five superstars, could be said to have planted that kiss on El Vinculo, a new wine from an ancient vineyard in La Mancha, a vast, sere region south of Madrid, where much low-quality wine is distilled into industrial alcohol. Mr. Fernandez identified old Tempranillo vines and rebuilt an abandoned winery to make El Vinculo. The 2000 Reserve was a deep, silken wine that co-existed rather than harmonized with the Monkfish “BLT” served at our Per Se lunch. Mr. Fernandez’s Pesquera “Millennium” 1996, on the other hand, was all suave, earthy synergy with the rib-eye of lamb. Also 100% Tempranillo, it was a great wine in its prime.

The old and new era of Spanish wine is spanned by superstar Mariano Garcia, who for 30 years made the legendary Vega Sicilia. Now Mr. Garcia makes his own wines from select sites in Ribera del Duero. The most powerful was San Roman 2001, from Toro, almost black in color, its flavors bold and spicy, showing the power side of Tempranillo. Gentler was Paixar 2002, made from Mencia in fast-rising Bierzo. Medium-hued, this wine was more deep than dense, with lively cherry and plum flavors that kept on coming.

Like the Mencia that fuels Paixar, other grapes once scorned by high-end winemakers, such as Carinena and Garnacha, were in their glory at this event. Downright startling was Quincha Corral 2001, a wine made from Bobal, a variety that does not even rate a mention in most wine reference books. I’d never heard of Bobal, but I won’t forget how it lit up Quincha Corral. Made by Sara Perez, a slender young mother of two and the only woman among the five superstars, the wine comes from a high vineyard west of Valencia. Bobal is so prolific, explained Ms. Perez, that it has to be thinned ruthlessly to produce less but more intense fruit. Surrounded by heavyweights, Quincha Corral, an agile wine with a lively core of fruit, more than held its own.

Clos Martinet, a wine from Priorat, a rugged, infertile region west of Tarragona. In less than a decade, Priorat has been vaulted out of obscurity to glamour status by newcomers like Ms. Perez and her Clos Martinet, which is plush, spicy, and as deeply flavorful as any wine I know. Despite Priorat’s typically high alcohol, Clos Martinet manages not to thump heavily on the palate. It’s made from a quartet of native and immigre French grapes: Garnacha, Carinena, Syrah, and Cabernet Sauvignon.

All five superstars seem to be constantly roaming the vast Spanish winelands, working their existing vineyards or finding new ones to resuscitate. The most peripatetic of all may be darkly handsome, 42-year-old Telmo Rodriguez, described by Lettie Teague in February’s Food & Wine as looking “a lot like Davy Jones of the Monkees … the one who made the girls scream.” Mr. Rodriguez’s properties dot the Iberian map, not excluding Portugal. He was the only superstar to present a wine from Rioja at the tasting, the “Altos de Lanzaga” 2002 (see below). While that wine is made from 70-year-old vines, conforming to the belief that older is better, Mr. Rodriguez cautions that there are limits. “I was shown some ancient gnarly vines by an owner who said, ‘Look, aren’t these vines fantastic?’ And I told her, ‘No, they’re dead,'” he recalled.

It wasn’t easy for the final pair of wines at the pre-lunch tasting to show more power than the previous eight, but they did. Both made by the charming, worldly Carlos Falco, Marques de Grinon, they were his Syrah 2002 and Emeritvs 2000, a highly un-Spanish blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot, and Syrah. Dark, with primal fruit, these muscular yet elegant wines practically jumped out of the glass. Trained at the University of California at Davis, Mr. Falco leaves Spanish traditional winemaking behind. “I respect enormously the approach of others to old vines and low yields,” he said. “It’s good to treasure old vineyards. But as an agronomist, I think we can use 20th-century technology to make better wines.”

Soon after installing an Israeli-designed drip-irrigation system at his new winery near Toledo, recounted Mr. Falco, “three or four big black cars” arrived filled with bureaucrats. Drip irrigation being unauthorized, and Mr. Falco was fined the equivalent of $100,000. “It was quite cheap publicity,” he said. “After that, everyone knew that Carlos Falco had a new vineyard in Toledo.”

Recommended Wines

ALTOS DE LANZAGA, RIOJA 2001 Winemaker Telmo Rodriguez looked high and low in Rioja for the ultimate Tempranillo vineyard. Forceful, cassis-inflected New Wave Rioja. Give it a few years. $70 at Zachys in Scarsdale, N.Y., 800-723-0241.

AALTO, RIBERA DEL DUERO, 2001 Softer than the above, this Tempranillo from Mariano Garcia is a pure fruit bomb – blueberry, plum, briary blackberry – yet it also manages to be elegant. For hedonists. $46.99 at PJ Wines, 4898 Broadway, 212-567-5500.

DEHESA LA GRANJA, ZAMORA 2000 Well to the west of most Spanish red wine country, Alejando Fernandez converted a breeding farm for fighting bulls to Tempranillo. Ripe but enlivened with good acids. Medium-bodied and at peak now. $18.95 at Sherry-Lehman, 679 Madison Ave., 212-838-7500.

CLOS MARTINET 2000, PRIORAT Among the few European wines that can pin most big-fruited New World Syrahs to the mat. As indicated above, this is a blend that contains only 20% Syrah. Despite being 14.5% alcohol, this wine isn’t hot. Just incredibly rich and deep. Age doesn’t improve Priorat, so drink up. $53.99 at PJ Wines.

MARQUES DE GRINON SYRAH 1999, DOMINIO DE VALDEPUSA Unapologetic in his boosterism for nonindigenous grapes, Carlos Falco pioneered Syrah in Spain. His home winery is in Toledo, hardly mainstream wine country. But the proof is in the bottle, and this energetic, clean-fruited Syrah makes the case. Inexplicably, Mr. Falco’s wines are hard to find locally. $29.99 at PJ Wines.