Winemaker Notes
Powerful balsamic notes, mature fruit, unctuous. A fleshy wine that satisfies the identity of the Monastrell variety from the old vineyards of El Seque.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The only wine I tasted from the winery in Alicante from Artadi was the red 2018 El Sequé, as the 2017 weather didn't allow them to produce the sweet wine. This is pure Monastrell from organically farmed vines at 600 meters in altitude on sandy and clay soils. The wine went through malolactic and aged for 12 months in 500-liter French oak barrels. It was a very difficult year with lots of rain, which decimated the yields. The wine is finer, more delicate, less Mediterranean with more fruit and quite approachable. It's certainly lighter than your average Mediterranean Monastrell, quite ethereal. It has very good freshness and very fine tannins. It has very clean and focused flavors with very good freshness. I like this vintage very much, but it was at the cost of production.
Full of ripe fruit, and robust, earthy goodness, Mourvèdre is actually of Spanish provenance, where it still goes by the name Monastrell or Mataro. It is better associated however, with the Red Blends of the Rhône, namely Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Mourvèdre shines on its own in Bandol and is popular both as a single varietal wine in blends in the New World regions of Australia, California and Washington. Somm Secret—While Mourvèdre has been in California for many years, it didn’t gain momentum until the 1980s when a group of California winemakers inspired by the wines of the Rhône Valley finally began to renew a focus on it.
Alicante is a port city in southeastern Costa Blanca and municipality in the Valencian Community of Spain. The eponymous DO is a non-contiguous appellation, divided between east and west. Along the eastern coast you find La Marina, a subzone known for its perfumed sweet white wines made from Moscatel de Alejandría; other white grape varieties include Merseguera and Malvasía. The drier, more extreme climate to the west is home to Monastrell, which accounts for 75% of total DO vineyard plantings. Other major red grape varieties include Garnacha Tintorera and Bobal, a thick-skinned black variety native to the Levante (the eastern edge of the Iberian Peninsula). Bobal had been destined for bulk wine production during much of its modern history but a new generation of winemakers today are taking advantage of the wide availability of old vine material, to produce full-bodied, concentrated wines, which are increasingly complex. In the last ten years, Alicante DO has gained popularity and respect for its new light, fresh wines and interesting varietal reds produced by pioneering bodegas.
Alongside the other wines emerging here, Alicante’s classic dessert wine, Fondillon, has been exported for centuries and is enjoying its own renaissance.