Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The purple-colored 2006 Alto Moncayo was aged in new French and American oak for 17 months before bottling without filtration. It offers up a sexy concoction of toasty new oak, lavender, spice box, cassis, and black raspberry. Round, rich, and voluptuous on the palate, it delivers plenty of up-front pleasure but hides enough ripe tannin to evolve for a few years. It can be enjoyed now and over the next decade. The Alto Moncayo wines, from the up-and-coming DO of Campo de Borja, are produced from old-vine Garnacha with winemaking overseen by veteran vigneron Chris Ringland.
-
Wine Spectator
This plush, dense red shows coffee and spicy oak, with berry and wild plum fruit and accents of licorice and black pepper. The tannins are firm but well-integrated, and this finishes warm and spicy. Modern and alluring. Drink now through 2012. 600 cases made.
Spanish red wine is known for being bold, heady, rustic and age-worthy, Spain is truly a one-of-a-kind wine-producing nation. A great majority of the country is hot, arid and drought-ridden, and since irrigation has only been recently introduced and (controversially) accepted, viticulture has sustained—and flourished—only through a great understanding of Spain’s particular conditions. Large spacing between vines allows each enough resources to survive and as a result, the country has the most acreage under vine compared to any other country, but is usually third in production.
Of the Spanish red wines, the most planted and respected grape variety is Tempranillo, the star of Spain’s Rioja and Ribera del Duero regions. Priorat specializes in bold red blends, Jumilla has gained global recognition for its single varietal Monastrell and Utiel-Requena has garnered recent attention for its reds made of Bobal.