Red Southern Spain over £10
Get our daily fine wine reviews, latest wine ratings, news and travel guides delivered straight to your inbox.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
And the winner is...
El Nido 2008, Bodegas El Nido, DO Jumilla
El Nido was founded in 2002 as a joint venture with the extended Gil Family, who are prominent in Jumilla (Finca Luzón, Juan Gil) and Jorge Ordóñez, of Málaga fame (see below).
The name of the bodega and the wine means ‘the nest’, and its sister wine is called Clio, which is the name of a bird. The bodega is a member of the Orowines Group, which operates seven wineries in different DOs around the country, with the avowed intent of encouraging the use of mainly local varieties.
El Nido has 32 ha of 65-year-old Monastrell, and 12 ha of 33-year-old Cabernet-Sauvignon. At harvest time the pickers go through the vineyards several times, picking only the ripest bunches on each pass, and the grapes are then hand-selected a second time on the sorting table.
The wine is a Cabernet/Monastrell mix with two years in new French oak, and although it tips the hydrometer at 15.5% abv, maintains a wonderful balance, fruit and fresh acidity, thereby giving the lie to those who say you can’t make a wine with any subtlety over 14% abv. The winery is ultramodern, with fermentation in open wooden vats, and malolactic in new barrels.
The winemakers are Bartolomé Abellán and Chris Ringland, who is Australian, and elsewhere in the Orowines group they make a 100% Monastrell wine called Wrongo Dongo, which seems to have a New World ‘stamp’ to it.
Get our daily fine wine reviews, latest wine ratings, news and travel guides delivered straight to your inbox.
Written by John Radford
John Radford, writer, broadcaster and Spanish wine specialist, died on 19 October 2012, aged 65. He was co-chair of Spain for the Decanter World Wine Awards since its inception and a longstanding Decanter contributor. He started out in wine retail at Vintage Wines in Nottingham, and soon discovered that he had a gift as a wine educator and communicator. He spent 13 years as a presenter on BBC local radio, while building his reputation as an expert on the wines of Spain. In 1998 his first book, The New Spain, won the Glenfiddich and Lanson awards. He followed this up with The Wines of Rioja and Cook Espana, Drink Espana (with Mario Sandoval). In 1996 was elected to the Gran Orden de Caballeros de Vino.