Juan Gil 2008 Jumilla from Bodegas Juan Gil, 15% abv, 100% Monastrell
This wine breaks two of my wine-drinking rules. Firstly, it’s 15% abv – usually too hot for me to enjoy. Secondly, it’s sold in a hefty, if stylish, bottle.
Now usually I don’t like wine in extra-heavy bottles. Sometimes all the effort and money has gone into the packaging and not into the wine, or the wines themselves are heavy-handed, built to impress with hefty oak and alcohol but hard to really enjoy a whole bottle of. In this case however, none of this is true.
This is certainly a powerful wine, but with such an exuberance of wild blackberry fruit it is almost joyful. It is squeaky clean and brimming with bright blackberry and blackcurrant aromas on the nose with sage and wild herb notes.
On the palate it is soft, full and creamy with a mouthful of blackberries,vanilla, spice and wild herbs encased in a vivid acidity, giving the wine vibrancy and freshness. Soft, ripe but slightly gravelly tannins complete the picture and add a bit of chalky dryness to the finish to balance the ripe flavours. The intensity of the fruit is easily a match
for the 15% alcohol which doesn’t intrude on the fiinish.
Available from everywine.co.uk
© 2011 – 2012, Susan Hulme MW. All rights reserved.