ON THE NOSE:
This wine smells like an old door knob as well as some of the classic aromas of all three varieties. Dry, dusty late evenings in autumn. Obvious dark cherry and pencil lead. After an hour or so some complexity begins to boast with creamy secondary cherry, like a cherry pie or a cherry lollipop.
ON THE PALATE:
At first this wine feels big and bold: real! After a decent sour attack it flows effortlessly through the mid-palate, making not much of a mark before moving on. There is a higher level of acidity than the tannic structure, but if you conscientiously take in some air while swishing the wine in your mouth you can experience some fine, sandy tannins. There is an odd watery taste, even though the wine is big and bold: Darcey and I both came up with this separately! There is some white and black pepper, and some of the cherry comes through too, but the wine ends up being flabby here, with few discernible tastes. The finish is pleasant and lingering, though thin and weak, with a light milk-chocolate covering the cherry flavor. It’s almost as if the mid-palate is missing; the wine goes from the attack to a small explosion of acidity in the roof of the mouth, and then, nada! Then the finish. It’s like there is a canal through the mid-palate where the taste of the wine flows, a bypass, a black hole. Even when tasting the finish you can still feel the missing portion of the wine-experience: vacuous, absent. omitted, gone.
This was not a very exciting wine-tasting experience for Darcey and me, and we cannot recommend this wine. Hey, enough said! Maybe I AM capable of short reviews!!!
(Click here for an explanation of our ratings ...)
Our Rating: 79
Would we drink it again? 
No, unless we were asked to give it another go in the event that the bottle was bad somehow, otherwise NO!
Would we buy it again?
No way. No way. There is no way we would buy this again.
About the Cariñena Region
Cariñena is both a grape variety and a wine region, where, ironically, the grape variety does not dominate; instead it is the Garnacha. The DO is next to, and east of Calatayud, and was famous for two things: the natural very high-strength wines that were widely used for blending both in and outside Spain; and the village of Puentetodos,
the birthplace of Goya.
Cariñena has been the most high profile of all of Aragons DO zones, perhaps because it has been around the longest. The zone was first demarcated in 1932 and received its official denominacion de origen documentation in 1960.
Cariñena today produces excellent, full-bodied tinto’s for which the region is justly renowned.
The Romans, as ever in this part of Spain, were the first to organize winemaking on a commercial level, but Cariñena had its own
regulations in place as early as 1696. It was also one of the first wine-producing regions in Spain to have its borders delimited.
The vineyards spread upwards from the flood-plain of the river Ebro into the mountains of the Sistema Iberica at
altitudes between 400 and 800 metres. Soils are good for vines, being comprised of limestone, a little chalk with some slate and alluvial deposits at the lower levels. The climate produces long hot summers and even longer autumns. Rainfall is relatively low at 300-350 millimetres, so yields are not likely to be high.
Garnacha accounts for 55% of the tinto grape varieties grown, with Tempranillo at 15% and Cariñena at 6%. For blanco’s the main variety is Macabeo, which accounts for 20% of the vineyard.
Cariñena produces some of the best wines in Aragon, and are usually given pride of place in many of the region’s restaurants. They are served alongside Migas, which is a dish of fried breadcrumbs and leftovers (bits of ham and cheese, but also fish, vegetables etc.). Roast lamb, kid and suckling-pig, which is the standard cuisine of northern Spain, are prominent menu items, and beef is often served raw alongside a plate of baked rock-salt to allow diners to cook it the way they want.
