Castillo de Monséran, Garnacha – A Tasty Bargain

Last Friday I joined an online tasting for #GarnachaDay. It’s a day when you can drink garnacha, just like any other day, except it’s called #GarnachaDay. It’s one of those special days invented by marketing/PR folks to give us a reason to talk about their wines. Seems as good as any other reason to taste and talk about wine.

We tried 5 different garnachas (or grenache) at this tasting and this was one of them.

Castillo de Monséran is a producer in the Cariñena region of Spain, south of Rioja. Garnacha is the most planted grape in the region and if you’re into bargains — which I know you are because you’re visiting this website — you can find some fabulous deals on garnacha from Cariñena. This bottle, for example, is pretty darn good and retails for about $9. I call that a bargain.

This is a young garnacha from the 2015 vintage and is meant to be consumed young, not stuck in your cellar.

If you like lively, fruity, spicy garnacha there’s a good chance you’ll dig this one. Intense cherry aromas dominate the nose, but there’s plenty of other action happening there too, such as cloves, raspberry, plums and cedar. The fruit flavors are bright and lively on the palate, and not too sweet (which is a good thing). Black cherry, plum, blackberry and chocolate give good complexity. The acidity is good. I was surprised by the depth to the mouthfeel too, I didn’t expect this wine to feel as rich as it does. It finishes fairly long.

Wine: Castillo de Monséran
Variety: Garnacha
Vintage: 2015
Alcohol: 13%
Rating: 86
Price: $9.00
Disclosure: This wine was received as a media sample.