Winemaker Notes
Juan Antonio Ponce's wine, crafted from 40–60-year-old Bobal vines in Manchuela, defies expectations with its unique process involving 100% whole clusters and aging in old wooden vats. Its bouquet blends earthy dark red fruits with notes of clove, spice, and leather. On the palate, bright strawberry flavors meet a chalky, firm finish, adorned with lingering hints of spice and earthiness.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2023 La Casilla fermented with full clusters and indigenous yeasts in 4,500-liter oak vats and matured in those vats and some 600-liter barrels for nine months. It has incredible freshness, 13% alcohol, a pH of 3.6 and 5.5 grams of acidity. It's complex and serious, a lot more complex than Clos Lojen, despite the small price difference, and it has notes of berries, herbs and flowers, plenty of aromatic Mediterranean herbs and very good freshness and acidity, fine tannins and very good overall balance, ideal with food. It's serious but easy to drink. It's more Rhône than Burgundy.
Bobal is enjoying a mini renaissance in Spain today as high-elevation vineyards in its homeland of Utiel-Requena produce dense and velvety wines dominated by dark berry and cocoa characteristics. However, its function as Spain’s second most planted red grape variety was once only for bulk wine and concentrate. Since it is drought-resistant, it does well grown as unirrigated bush vines and acts as a fine voice of terroir. Somm Secret—Bobal also shows great potential for rosé and sparkling wines because of its high levels of acidity and anthocyanins.
The Moors gave it the name, ‘Manxa,’ which fittingly means ‘parched earth.’ La Mancha, the largest Spanish wine producing region in all of Spain, is one of its hottest and driest. Sturdy and drought-resistant white varieietes like Airen, Viura and Verdejo thrive in this environment.