First Mourvèdre Monday in the new format!!
Image credit: Alaskan Dude via Flickr
I’ve tried 3-4 of the wines in this lineup over the past year or two and this is first one that has really grabbed my attention.
Price: around $17
Tag Archives: Yecla
Mourvèdre Monday #24: Castaño Hecula 2005
Back to Spain for Mourvèdre Monday. This one’s from Bodegas Castaño, one of the biggest producers of Monastrell in Yecla, in southeastern Spain. This wine got 90+ points from Parker for 5 straight vintages, including this one. Let’s see what’s up.
Producer: Bodegas Castaño
Grapes: 100% Monastrell
Appellation: Yecla
Vineyards: From 30+ year old vines in two vineyards: Las Gruesas and Pozuelo. Both with soils of sand, clay and limestone.
Vintage: 2005
Winemaking: 6 months of aging. It’s not clear from tech sheet in what vessel, but I would guess tank or neutral oak.
Alcohol: 14.5%
Price: Around $12
Tasting notes: Dusty fruit on the nose playing second fiddle to dried flowers and a sweaty, meaty aroma. I catch a fleeting licorice note as well. On the palate there are rich blackberry and red fruit flavors with an interesting mossy background note. Finishes short and dry with a little heat.
Overall impression: Some intriguing elements that don’t quite come together into a harmonious whole as well as I would like. Still an nice bottle that I enjoyed spending the evening with. And a nice value at around $12. B
Free association:
More info:
90 points from Parker and Tanzer. Parker gave this wine 90 or 91 points in vintages 2002-2006.
Jeff over at Viva La Wino reviewed this one last year and loved it.
Mourvèdre Monday #17: Carro Tinto 2008
This wine always catches my eye on the shelf, with it’s orange label and simple design. I’ve had past vintages and like it pretty well, so let’s see what’s up with the 2008.
Carro Tinto 2008
Producer: Bodega Señorio de Barahonda. They put out 10 or 12 different bottlings of Monastrell or Monastrell blends under the Barahonda, Carro and Bellum labels, including two previous Mourvèdre Monday wines: the Barahonda Monastrell 2006 (B-) and the Nabuko 2007 (B). Based on past results, I’ll taste as many of their wines as I can find.
Grapes: 50% Monastrell, 20% Syrah, 20% Tempranillo and 10% Merlot
Appellation: Yecla, (D.O., Spain)
Vineyards: From high-altitude vineyards (2339 feet) with rocky limestone soils.
Winemaking: no oak
Alcohol: 14%
Price: $9 or $10, usually
My tasting notes: Dusty blue and black fruit on the nose with significant earthiness, minerality and barnyard funk. On the palate, the funk goes on and on, with a strong meaty/animal aspect that brings to mind that episode of Man vs. Wild when Bear Grylls snacks on a dead Zebra (I mean that in the best possible way). There are some nice smoke and pepper/spice notes. The fruit is there, too — blackberry & plum — but it’s not playing the starring role. The wine finishes very dry with a pronounced iron/mineral character that I’m enjoying.
Overall impression: Old World fans will find a lot to like here, while I suspect New World-ers may fear the funk. Give it a good bit of air for best results. I like what it brings to the table for $10. And, while only 50% Monastrell/Mourvèdre, it delivers a lot of that grape’s character, for my palate. B/B-
Update 6/08/2010: This review was written after one evening with the bottle. The next day, I finished the other half of the bottle and it was drinking beautifully on day two. So I’m bumping it to a full B.
Free Association:
More info:
88 points Parker (Jay Miller) and 87 points IWC.
Other blogger reviews: Bottle a Day, Wine Reviews You Can Understand and Wine-Smith
Mourvèdre Monday #10: Nabuko 2007
This is the tenth installment of Mourvèdre Monday. Click here for the other posts in the series.
We return to Spain for this week’s Mourvèdre Monday post. And not only back to Spain, but back to the producer of Week 1’s wine: the Barahonda 06 Monastrell. This is another wine in their lineup – this one blended with Syrah.
Producer: Señorio de Barahonda
Grapes: 50% Monastrell (Mourvèdre), 50% Syrah
Appellation: Yecla (DO, Spain)
Vineyards: High-altitude (2339 feet)
Vintage: 2007
Winemaking: A brief stint (3 months) in French oak
Alcohol: 14%
Price: $15
My tasting notes: On the nose, I get smoky wild berry fruit with aromatic herbs. A bit of cranberry juice cocktail and earthy minerality. It feels alive in the mouth with a prickly acidity, almost like your mouth feels after eating Pop Rocks. It dances across the tongue rather than coating it. The flavors are a bit richer and darker than that would suggest: plummy and chocolatey – almost like a chocolate soda. The green/herbal note from the nose sticks around here as well. On day 2, it’s drinking very nicely. That initial prickly-ness is gone and the wine has smoothed out and feels more “complete”.
Overall impression: Another enjoyable Monastrell – this one a bit more interesting and nuanced than some of the others. Not sure it’s a “No Brainer” like the label says (that’s what the NB stands for in the picture below), but worth checking out. B
Free association:
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fragmented/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
More info:
90 points from Parker: “The 2007 Nabuko is a blend of 50% Monastell and 50% Syrah aged for three months in French oak. Purple-colored, the aromatics feature fragrant blueberries and blackberry. This is followed by a chewy, layered wine with spicy blue and black fruits and mineral notes making an appearance. Long and rich, this tasty, balanced effort can be enjoyed over the next 4-5 years.”
More reviews at Johnston Spissinger Wine Blog, Honolulu Wine Scene and CellarTracker.
Mourvedre Monday #8: Castaño Monastrell 2007 Rosado
A recent post over at Benito’s Wine Reviews got me thinking about rosé. I need a reminder every once in a while. Almost every time I drink one, I think, “Why don’t I drink this more often?” Then I go back to my reds and whites. So, as I was contemplating what to pull from the cellar for this week’s Mourvedre Monday post, I thought of this rosé (or, more properly, rosado – though they use the term rosé on the back label). I’ve been on the hunt for the red Monastrell from Castaño, which has been recommended to me by several folks following Mourvedre Mondays. I haven’t found it yet in my local shops, but I did come across their rosé, which is how this ended up in my cellar to begin with. I haven’t done a rosé yet in this series, so it seemed like good timing. Let’s check it out.
Producer: Bodegas Castaño – a major producer in Yecla, owning about 10% of the vineyard land in the DO
Grapes: 90% Monastrell, 10% Garnacha
Appellation: Yecla (DO, Spain)
Vineyards: Limestone soils. 25-30 year old vines.
Vintage: 2007
Winemaking: Stainless steel aging (based on 08 info; no info on website about 07)
Alcohol: 13%
Price: Around $10
My tasting notes: The color is quite red for a nominally pink wine. Kinda like the color of red wine in TV sitcoms. (You ever notice that?) It smells like it’s going to be a sweet wine — kind of a burnt sugary thing — but with some good juicy strawberry and raspberry aromas. Also some Slim Jim on the nose (Oh Yeeeeah!). Good weight in the mouth and some strawberry and apple skin notes, but some slightly oxidized flavors as well. Pretty awkward overall.
Overall impression: Not an especially pleasurable beverage. You can do way better than this. C-
Free association: The kind of rosé an undiscerning Stormtrooper might order.
Photo credit: Greg Easton Photography (via Flickr). Be sure to check out the whole Adventures in Stormtrooping series and his other toy collections (prepare to lose an hour or two of your life!).
More info:
Imported by Eric Solomon.
Reviews at CellarTracker (avg: 81) and another at Chicago Vines Society, who liked it more than me.
Mourvèdre Monday #1: Barahonda Monastrell 2006
Just after the New Year, I decided to make 2010 ‘The Year of Mourvèdre‘ for VINEgeek and pledged to institute Mourvèdre Mondays. For this, the first installment, I didn’t want to begin with a top-dog wine (Beaucastel Chateauneuf-du-Pape, for example), mostly because I didn’t want the rest of the year to seem like a letdown. I want to ease into this thing. We’ve got 50 weeks to go, dear readers. So I decided to go with an affordable bottle from Spain, where Mourvèdre (or Monastrell as they call it) originated. And fittingly for the first installment, we start with a winery whose “major ambition is to reveal the great potential of wines made with 100% Monastrell.”
Producer: Señorio de Barahonda
Grapes: 100% Monastrell
Appellation: Yecla (DO, Spain). 85% of the grapes grown in this region are Monastrell, according to the Oxford Companion to Wine (2006).
Vineyards: Barahonda owns 840 acres of vineyards in Yecla, with 500 planted to Monastrell. The age of the vines range from 15-120 years. The soils are composed of limestone and chalk topsoil with clay and gravel subsoil.
Winemaking: No oak treatment. (They do a version called Barahonda Barrica which sees time in oak and gets some Cab blended in.)
Alcohol: 15%
Price: I paid $13 at Central Market, but I see it online for $10.
My tasting notes: Rich blackberry jam and earth notes on the nose. More blackberry and maybe cherry flavors on the palate with a sort of meaty, roasted fruit quality. It’s somewhat soft-textured in the mid-palate, but not flabby. There’s a nice little prickle of minerality and acidity at the end. It finishes with a bit of tannic grip and some definite heat from the 15% abv.
Overall impression: A solid start to Mourvèdre Mondays. Tasty dark fruit with some character. If you can get it for around $10, that’s a good value. B-
Free association:
Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/drwhimsy/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
More info:
Other reviews at CellarTracker.
Some nice photos from the Barahonda website:
