La Portera ‘Tardano’ Garnacha 2021

La Portera ‘Tardano’ Garnacha is a unique take on the Garnacha grape which is full of red cherry, raspberry, liquorice and hints of pepper spice. It is a medium bodied wine which is lively and a step away from over extracted and overpowering old school Spanish Garnacha. It shows layers of flavour, complexity and most importantly is super enjoyable. The grapes are sourced from two parcels in the village of Almonacid de la Sierra which sit on limestone and clay soils. The vines were planted in 1983 and sit 650m above sea level.

Argicola La Portera is a wine making project akin to Gary Lightbody’s early noughties Scottish supergroup The Reindeer Section. Javier del Blanco, Francisco Santiso and Jorge Navascues are all wonderful winemakers in their own right, Jorge being the most well known as head winemaker at Rioja Contino, but together, like a fine blend, their whole becomes greater than their parts. The project was born in 2017 with the desire to bottle small parcels of old vine Bobal from Javier’s home region of Valencia. The original vineyard is in the tiny village of La Portera which gives its name to the wine. In 2019 the project was expanded to a Garnacha sourced from a couple of plots in Carinena.

The aim of the La Portera project is to produce wines that showcase both the grape variety and a sense of place. Even as I write that, it sounds like a cliché, but many feel that Spain is still dominated by Tempranillo and Rioja. Nothing wrong at all with either, but even Rioja is going through a movement towards non-Tempranillo grapes and specific vineyard site selection. The La Portera wines are fermented with indigenous yeasts and aged in neutral vessels, mostly concrete which results in elegant rather than powerful wines and showcases both wonderful grape varieties and their respected regions.