“I love the bad vintages, because it’s a challenge for good winemakers,” says Ismael Álvarez, the sommelier of Bilbao restaurant Nerua as we drive to the txakoli vineyards of Itsasmendi in Spain’s Basque Country. “In good years anyone can make good wine.”

This year hasn’t been a good one for txakoli, the wines of Spanish Basque country, which are traditionally limited to slightly sparkling, dry white wines with high acidity and low alcohol content, most often made from the hondarribi zuria varietal. Additionally, it has been a particularly bad year to convert the vineyards to biodynamics, which is mostly unheard of in these conditions, though they’ll argue that there’s never a bad time to push the boundaries of how natural a wine can be.

There have been wild swings in temperatures this year, though winemaking in Basque country has never been easy. The green, mountainous region can be wet and cold and gets less sunlight than anywhere else in Spain. The resulting, low alcohol wines were mostly consumed in the same places they were made or homes around San Sebastián and Bilbao, unlike the wines of Rioja and Ribera del Duero, from where exports continue to balloon.

“Twenty years ago, Basque wines were high in acidity, like vinegar, and not interesting. They weren’t known outside of Basque Country,” says Álvarez, as we arrive to one of Itsasmendi’s two dozen or so small plots of grapes. “Here they are making some amazing wines.”

Txakoli, pronounced “chock-oh-lee,” is simply the word for wine in Basque Country, as well as parts of Cantabria on Spain’s Atlantic coast and some parts of northern Castile and León. In Spanish Basque Country, there are three primary regions – Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa and Alava – and the txakoli is a little bit different from each. If you have had txakoli in the U.S. it has probably come from Getaria, the oldest and largest Denominación de Origen (D.O.), part of Gipuzkoa, and the largest producer of the wine. Alava is smaller and further from the coast, leading to wines that are less acidic and fuller bodied. Bizkaia, which includes Bilbao and where Itsasmendi’s vineyards are located, has clay soil, resulting in wines with higher minerality.