Winemaker Notes
"The 2005 Altos de la Hoya Monastrell "Ungrafted Old Vines" is a perennial Best Buy in this journal. Purple in color, the wine offers up a nearly exotic nose (perhaps due to wild yeast fermentation) of earth, minerals, blueberries, and blackberries. This medium to full-bodied effort possesses layers of sweet, ripe fruit, and soft tannins yet is surprisingly elegant. Drink this tasty wine over the next 2-3 years."
-Wine Advocate
"From ungrafted old vines. Deep ruby. Ripe, powerful scents of blackberry, cassis and candied plum, with a bit of Garnacha in the blend seeming to brighten the darker fruit character. Fat and lush, with deep, sweet blackcurrant and blackberry flavors and no rough edges. Finishes dense, fresh and long, with a repeating blackberry note. This has the concentration and sappy texture of a much more expensive wine."
-International Wine Cellar
Professional Ratings
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.