Finca Bacara White Skulls Monastrell Jumilla 2024
£12.45
The wine
A juicy, punchy and opulent red with attractive floral aromas, ripe fruit and balsamic notes in the background. Balanced freshness on the palate lifts the vibrant fruit through to a smooth and persistent finish. Organically farmed old-vine Monastrell.
Monastrell is Mourvedre in France and Mataro in Australia, and it needs more heat than almost any variety to ripen, which is why it flourishes at Jumilla where rainfall barely reaches 300 millimetres a year. White Skulls is the lightest of the estate's range, made unoaked to show the fruit.
The producer
Finca Bacara
View all Finca Bacara winesFinca 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.
