2017 Care Nativa Garnacha Viñas Viejas Cariñena 750 ml

Spanish Garnacha is one of the finest values in the wine world, and Care's Nativa is perhaps the premier deal out there. It’s a 93-point, do-everything bottle that James Suckling praised as "juicy and delicious"—which sums it up perfectly because it never seems to last very long in our glasses.

Bodegas Care hails from Cariñena, one of the top spots for Spanish Garnacha. Their old, gnarled vines date back to 1948, with roots that reach deep into the limestone-heavy soils in search of water. The vines grow in a high desert–like plateau in Aragón, where warm days allow for easy ripening and rich fruit but the altitude brings chilly nights to help preserve acidity.

In the winery, Care works to create a richly textured bottling with elegance and juicy fruit. The grapes are handled gently and fermented in truncated-cone stainless-steel fermenters before moving to basket-style presses that avoid excessive extraction of hard tannins and ensure the wine has a velvety mouthfeel—all techniques you’d normally expect from wineries that produce much more expensive bottles. Aging in used oak barrels allows enough oxygenation for complexity to develop with only minimal wood influence, resulting in an easy-to-drink wine that’s delicious on its own or with a classic meal.

From roast chicken to a mellow night’s snack on the porch, this wine pairs with just about anything. We’ll happily keep pouring this wine whatever the meal, and we recommend you do so as well.