Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Las Alas de Frontonio La Tejera was produced with a Garnacha-based field blend, as the 1.4-hectare 85-year-old vineyard where it comes from also has some Macabeo. It's a plot on clay, slate and quartzite soils at 630 meters in altitude with a northwest orientation in the village of Alpartir. They used 100% full clusters for the native fermentation in open-top oak barrels, which allowed them to foot-tread the grapes. The wine matured for 14 months in small (550-liter) oak vats from Italy in a cold underground cellar 17 meters below ground. This has a spectacular nose, subtle and elegant and an improvement even over the great 2018. It's vibrant and pungent, and the tannins are very fine, slightly chalky and give it a nice texture. There's a salty twist on the finish.
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.