Juan Gil Family Estates Wine Tasting - Table Wine - Asheville, North Carolina

Friday Wine Down: Spanish Reds from Juan Gil Family Estates

This Friday, February 28th from 4 to 7 p.m. — $5/person…..Free for Grape Nuts — If you like full bodied, spicy-rich reds, this is your tasting! We’ll pour nothing but reds this Friday, and we’ll be featuring wines from the historic, award winning Juan Gil Family Estates. Founded in 1916 in Jumilla, Spain, this family run operation now includes vineyards and wines from a number of Spain’s most prolific growing zones. From their entry level Honoro Vera wines to their more “grown up” wines like Atteca, Can Blau, and Juan Gil Monastrell, everything this family touches is delicious and you can’t beat the prices. We’ll have six of their wines open to try before you buy, and there’s something for everyone here. Join us and get your week end off to a great start with a Friday Wine Down at Table Wine!

The Wines

1. 2012 Honoro Vera Merlot (Jumilla, Spain): This is one of the top selling red wines in the store, and if you haven’t tasted it, now is your chance. Aged for four months in French and American oak, it is sweet, ripe and friendly with spicy notes of ripe cherry, plum, vanilla, chocolate and mint.

2. 2012 Honoro Vera Garnacha (Calatayud, Spain): Moving into the northern, higher, more rugged landscape of Calatayud, Honor Vera’s Garnacha is just a pure turn-on wine. Ripe, fleshy, soft and open knit, it is a relatively straightforward wine, but what’s not to like. Ripe blueberry, blackberry and cherry fruit are framed nicely by spicy mocha notes.

3. 2012 Honoro Vera Monastrell (Jumilla, Spain): Here’s another amazing value and one that already has a number of fans. With notes of cherry and blackberry liqueur along with a smoky, floral quality, this is one of those wines to buy in bulk for all sorts of casual drinking occasions.

4. 2011 Bodegas Ateca “Atteca” Garnacha Old Vines (Calatayud, Spain): Atteca is basically the “reserve” bottling of the Honoro Vera Garnacha. Grapes come from older vines (up to 100 years old) and the aging in oak is longer, resulting in a wine with more palate coverage and saturated flavors. Silky, sweet, ripe and ready to go, this one shoots out of the glass with sexy notes of kirsch, macerated strawberry, coffee, mocha and exotic spice notes.

5. 2012 Celler Can Blau “Blau” (Montsant, Spain): This Priorat lookalike is composed of Carignan, Garnacha and Syrah and enjoys a brief aging in French oak. The resulting wine is polished, pure and fleshy with ripe raspberry, cherry and strawberry notes along with pronounced Asian spice nuances.

6. 2012 Bodegas Juan Gil Monastrell (Jumilla, Spain): The estate specialty is Monastrell, and this one comes from 40 year old vines and is aged for 12 months in new French oak. Explosive notes of blueberry, blackberry, black cherry, licorice, pepper and violet permeate this full bodied, full flavored effort.