Tasting Notes
As always, this La Mancha Tempranillo is a wine that should be on every dinner table – a Vino Tinto that will fill you with a warm, fuzzy glow and will pair deliciously with anything from a hearty meat stew, kebabs off the barbeque to a salty Manchego cheese. A nose of black cherry, plum, blackberry and stewed strawberry with dusty, vanilla-scented oak and a dab of black chocolate. The palate is packed with this sweet generous fruit but with a stoney acidity that makes it feel quite refreshing, and just the gentlest nibble of tannin. Very long with a warming glow on the finish.
More Info
On our Spanish buying trip a couple of years ago, we must have tasted more than a hundred wines before we alighted upon the garnachas and tempranillos of Familia Bastida. When the winemaker gave us a taste of his top wine, made from old vines planted in 1950, we honestly thought that it would be a £20+ wine. Imagine how our jaws dropped when he told us it was half that price. Imagine also our excruciating attempts to hold our best poker faces as we asked him to double-check the price for us. But sure enough, the price was right. The Familia Bastida Alceo really does drink like a more expensive wine. It's jolly hard to find wines of this pedigree, made with such old vines, at such a price.