Finca Bacara

Finca Bacara farms at Jumilla in Murcia, in the arid south-east of Spain, on around 800 hectares of estate vineyard. The labels are among the more striking in Spain and have made the wines instantly recognisable.

Jumilla is Monastrell country. The grape is Mourvedre in France and Mataro in Australia, and it needs more heat than almost any other variety to ripen, which is why it flourishes in a region receiving barely 300 millimetres of rain a year. The vineyards sit at 700 to 800 metres on poor limestone, and the old bush vines are dry-farmed by necessity. Jumilla also escaped phylloxera longer than most of Europe because of its sandy soils, and ungrafted vines survive there.

Those conditions produce concentrated fruit at very low yields, and Jumilla has become one of the best-value serious wine regions in Europe. The estate is farmed organically.