Bodegas Frontonio - Garnacha Microcosmico 2022

"Frontonio is now owned exclusively by Fernando Mora and Mario López, and they have moved all their operations to the village of Alpartir (their offices used to be in Zaragoza). They keep working in their vineyards, and 11 hectares of them (from a total of 65) are now worked with biodynamics and 16 of them worked with horses. And they have their first wines from the vineyards they bought in the Vircort Mountains. It's a very dynamic project, and they are continuously learning and improving; they are doing a geological study of their zone that they have renamed Sierras del Jalón (Jalón Mountains) and have also hired a historian to understand the zone, the structure and the people. They have started working with concrete eggs and have revamped the winery, creating a library to store all their wines and vintages. This is ]a fascinating name in constant evolution and at the top of the quality hierarchy, quite an achievement when you consider that they only started in 2010.>-Luis Gutierrez, Robert Parker Wine Advocate

"The austere red 2022 Microcósmico Garnacha has moderate ripeness and alcohol (13.5%) and very good freshness and acidity (pH 3.32 and close to six grams of tartaric acid per liter). It was cropped from 50+-year-old vines on slate soils, some eight hectares on north-facing plots at 650 to 700 meters above sea level and fermented with 40% full clusters that were foot trodden in concrete, with a maceration of around 30 days, where it also underwent malolactic fermentation. The wine matured in underground concrete vats for seven months. It has a showy nose, with ripeness but without excess; they had to discard some grapes because they had both green and raising grapes in a bunch. It has fine, chalky tannins that are abundant and crunchier and a dry, clean finish."-Luis Gutierrez