2021 Finca Bacara 3015 Monastrell Ecologico Jumilla 750 ml

To make bold, ripe, powerful wines, you need a warm, sunny climate—and few winegrowing regions are warmer and sunnier than Jumilla in southeastern Spain.

"Jumilla is home to an impressively vast collection of old, bush-grown and drought-resistant Monastrell vines," said Vinous's late Josh Raynolds, and the bold, dark, and intense red wines they produce “deliver immediate pleasure for ridiculously low prices.”

The organically grown 93-point “3015” Monastrell Ecologico is a wine that feels like you’ve taken a classic Spanish red and concentrated it even further. Grown on old vines planted in dark, limestone-studded soil, delivering a wave of black blackberry and plums crashing on wild herbs, raw cacao, violets, and black pepper, it brings centerpiece-worthy levels of intrigue to your table for a double-take-worthy price.

Jumilla is the world’s epicenter for old-vine Monastrell (aka Mourvèdre), which thrives in the area’s searing climes. Enjoying 3,000 hours of sunshine a year, the grape ripens beautifully while keeping a lively streak of acidity thanks to the area’s high elevation and wide diurnal temperature swings. 

Monastrell thrives in hot, sunny climes, which is why Jumilla is the world’s epicenter for the old-vine iteration. It’s a land of extremes, characterized by huge plains and valleys that see little rain. It’s freezing in the winter, scorching in the summer, with chalky soils whose high hydric capacity allows the vines to survive prolonged droughts. And since Finca Bacara’s vineyards are located at nearly 3,000 feet of elevation, they enjoy (or deal with) a huge diurnal swing, which we can thank for the lively streak of acid that balances the ripe, sun-baked fruit.