La Montesa

La Montesa is a well-defined, refined wine, signed by the Palacios family, wine artisans wherever they make it, in the Priorat, Bierzo or La Rioja. With a little more Grenache added to each vintage, it is a flavoursome and refreshing wine, raised on the radiant slopes of Mount Yerga, in the highest part of the Alfaro municipality, in 'La Rioja Oriental'. In the words of Luis Gutiérrez, "The quality/price champion 2018".

La Montesa is produced from vineyards covering over 90 hectares of chalky-clay soils in Rioja Oriental (previously known as Rioja Baja) at a height of 550 metres above sea level. The pebble-covered soils are worked using organic agriculture methods and enjoy a clearly Mediterranean climate with Atlantic influences which emphasize day/night temperature differences. Yields are kept low to ensure the wine's quality. Grapes are harvested by hand early in the morning during most of the month of October, and the must ferments with wild yeast under the watchful eye of Álvaro Palacios. It is then macerated with skins for 35-40 days and aged in wood. Finally, the wine is bottled just as it comes, unfiltered, unclarified and unstabilized.

Ever since the 2017 vintage, La Montesa vines have held the official organic agriculture certificate. Hours of work and effort have gone into making it one of the organic wines with the largest production in the world.

It has a moderately dense claret colour and delights the nose with wild red fruits, flowers, and spicy hints from its time in wood. Elegantly tantalizing in the mouth, it is a fine, fresh, subtle and delicate wine offering polished tannins and intense and deep flavours – toasted notes also appear, alongside hints of undergrowth and fallen leaves. Despite its large-scale production (650,000 bottles a year), La Montesa is a guarantee of quality year after year, deservedly winning its place among the list of best-value-for-money wines. A wine worth so much more than its price.