Winemaker Notes
‘Veraton’ is the third wine Alto Moncayo produces from the Garnacha grape, from vines between 30 and 50 years old, and aged in barrels for 16 months. It is a wine with an attractive collection of balsamic notes, of chocolate and black fruits, very warm in the mouth and an extremely pleasant finish.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A very rich and attractively dense garnacha that has a succulent, dark-berry core with such lively, deeply ripe and long tannins. Such depth and great balance. Majestic wine. Drink or hold.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2016 Alto Moncayo Veraton is an impressive Grenache. TASTING NOTES: This wine from the Campo de Borja is long-lasting on the palate. Enjoy its luxurious aroma and flavors of raspberries with a healthy serving of rosemary and black pepper-accented, spit-roasted leg of lamb. (Tasted: November 19, 2019, San Francisco, CA)
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Their more approachable wine is the 2016 Veratón, produced exclusively with Garnacha grapes from vines planted in the 1970s and 1980s and fermented with neutral yeasts and matured in new and second use French and American oak barrel for 16 months. This already sets the tone of the house style with plenty of spicy, toasty and smoky aromas, vanilla, coconut, cinnamon, a creamy touch and a round and lush palate with 15% alcohol, abundant tannins and pungent flavors, mostly oak related. It's clean and has a warm and long finish marked by the alcohol. It's difficult to see the variety with all this oak. For fans of ripe oaky reds.
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Wine Enthusiast
Concentrated berry fruit aromas are aided by vanilla and grainy oak scents. A tannic palate is no easy ride due to tannins that bite. Blackberry, chocolate, marshmallow and vanilla flavors finish with a final whack of spicy oak cut by leftover berry freshness. If big, ripe Garnacha is your thing, this should do the trick.
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.