“2018 was clearly a great vintage for Más Que Vinos, with some of the best wines they have produced since they started in 1999.” – The Wine Advocate

”Fabulous” - JancisRobinson.com

As it says ‘Garnacha’ in great big letters on the front label, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this wine would be made from Spain’s third most widely-planted grape variety, Garnacha, but you should know better than that. As soon as you think you understand wine, it will nutmeg you and laugh mockingly as it runs away with the ball. This wine is actually made from Alicante Bouschet, one of the very few Vitis Vinifera grapes with red flesh and more commonly seen in Portugal and the Languedoc, but here in Toledo, south of Madrid, it is known as Garnacha Tintorera, so they put Garnacha on the label.

The aforementioned red-flesh of the Garnacha Tintorera grape gives the wine its crimson colour, without the need for a heavy extraction, so everything, from the aromas to the tannins, feel soft and flowing. There’s something slightly floral on the nose, I’m thinking oleander, even though I don’t really know what I’m talking about, but there’s definitely a lot of black cherry and white pepper, together with cool graphite (remember chewing your pencil at school?) and bay leaf. It was aged for 12 months in clay amphorae and that imparts a certain earthenware quality to the flavour as well as the texture. It’s all very well listing aromas and flavours, but a wine needs a reason to be on our list and in your shopping basket, so how does this wine earn its place? Well, apart from the grape variety being a delicious curiosity, we think it’s a wine that brilliantly represents modern Spanish winemaking with its relatively light alcohol of 12.5% abv as well as a beautiful sleek, glossy freshness to the fruit that makes it a hugely versatile companion for classic or modern Spanish gastronomy favouring, as it does, cool elegance over old-fashioned heft and power. Drink now-2030.

Organic (certified)

Press review:

The Wine Advocate: “I was really surprised by the floral and elegant nose of the 2018 La Garnacha de la Madre to the point that I thought maybe I was mistaken and that the wine was produced with Garnacha rather than Garnacha Tintorera grapes! The vines are in a cooler place, and they ripen slowly and are picked late with fully developed aromas and flavours but, curiously enough, not with a very dark colour. It talks about a short maceration and an élevage in amphora for 12 months, which has respected the primary character of the wine while it's also polished and complex. The finest vintage for this wine so far. Only 3,000 bottles.” 93+ points

JancisRobinson.com: “A red-rusty-bloody smell that takes me straight to loma and chorizo and big old rusting iron chains. It smells like rain-soaked smoked paprika and the sulk of a full-lipped, stormy child. It tastes rusty and iron-red, like bleeding berries and oven-dried tomatoes and bare kid knuckles scraped on hot stone walls. Add food and as if by magic, your mouth fills with fresh red hibiscus petals, strawberry poppers and a dusting of white pepper. The tannins do this little now-you-see-me-now-you-don't prank, like a teenager practising magic tricks, and you can't help yourself from trying to work out if you can find them or not, and when, exactly, do they disappear. And re-appear. Dressed in Eddie Izard's dressing gown. Maybe. Either way, fabulous with the aforementioned chorizo. (TC). Drink now-2027.” 16.5 points