Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This shows strawberries with dried herbs and a touch of slate. Incredible energy to the expansive, fresh, medium- to full-bodied palate, with supple, framing tannins. Long and persistent with overwhelming balance between acidity and concentration. Delicious now but will evolve favorably.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
My favorite wine after the ones from El Jardín de las Iguales comes from a very nice plot of old vines on slate soils with a vein of white stones, rich in quartzite and with a majority of Garnacha (there are some other scattered vines of different varieties). The floral and elegant 2022 Las Alas de Frontonio La Tejera comes from soil with some clay; and in the past, they must have used that clay to make roof tiles, and that's why the place is named the "roof-tile workshop" (la tejera). This is spectacular, even in a challenging year, when the wine keeps the poise and elegance, complexity, flowers and citrus. It's herbal, bright and textured, with an ethereal quality but serious and with inner energy and light. The tannins are very fine and elegant. I found this every bit as good as the 2021.
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.