Winemaker Notes
With richness, sweetness, and high-toned expression of the grape, this is balanced, focused and long. It exemplifies the “cool” aspect that separates Frontonio from other practitioners of the art of producing well-balanced wines in warm climates. Strawberries galore sprinkled with black pepper.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The red 2017 Telescópico Garnacha Tinta & Garnacha Peluda has a mixture of biotypes of Garnacha (Fina and Peluda) sourced from old vineyards in the middle and higher-altitude parts of the villages of Alpartir and Morata de Jalón on a mixture of slate and limestone soils. It's a change. The year was marked by terrible frosts in April, and the rest of the season was warm and dry, so yields were low. It fermented with indigenous yeasts and around 25% full clusters in open-top fermenters and concrete vats with manual punch-downs and a maceration of 35 days. It matured in 500-liter oak barrels and 2,500-liter oak foudres for 13 months. This wine has changed a lot, its origin and its élevage; it's fresher and has less oak, almost as if it were a completely new wine. It's floral and expressive; Garnacha Peluda has more tension and acidity, a little more rusticity, that adds to this blend. Very fresh and relatively light for a year like 2017.
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James Suckling
This has a very bright, spicy, herbal and gently meaty feel on the nose with bright red berries and a lick of pepper. The palate is crisp, direct and assertive with a sour-cherry 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.