Bodegas la Purísima Campules El Moreno Monastrell Yecla
£8.95
The wine
A deliciously moreish red showing an abundance of black fruit and spicy overtones through to a juicy palate, full of fruit in an easy-drinking style. Monastrell with a little Tempranillo for softness.
El Moreno means the dark one. Monastrell with Tempranillo, unoaked and made for immediate drinking. Yecla's old bush vines are dry-farmed on poor limestone at altitude, and the combination of heat, drought and elevation gives concentrated fruit at very low yields, which is where the value comes from.
The producer
Bodegas la Purísima
View all Bodegas la Purísima winesBodegas la Purisima is a growers' cooperative at Yecla in Murcia, founded in 1946 and now drawing on around a thousand members farming some 2,000 hectares.
Yecla is Monastrell country. The grape is known as Mourvedre in France and Mataro in Australia, and it needs more heat than almost any other variety to ripen properly, which is why it thrives in this arid corner of south-eastern Spain and struggles almost everywhere else. Vineyards sit at 600 to 800 metres on poor limestone soils, with barely 300 millimetres of rain a year and old bush vines that are dry-farmed by necessity.
Those conditions produce concentrated fruit at very low yields, which is why wines from Yecla and its neighbours Jumilla and Almansa offer some of the best value in Europe. Monastrell gives deep colour, firm tannin and a savoury, faintly gamey character that sets it apart from the softer Spanish reds further north.
