After 3 Dulce 2011 50 cl

The sweet red Monastrell 2011 After 3 was bottled with 15% alcohol and some 60 grams of residual sugar, obtained with the fruit of 55-year-old vines that yield 1,000 kilos of grapes per hectare, picked overripe with 19% potential alcohol. The full clusters fermented until it stopped, but it was never fortified. It matured in 225- and 500-liter French oak casks for 12 months. They started producing this sweet Monastrell in 2011, but somehow I had never crossed paths with it. It has the classical Mediterranean aromas of herbs, tree bark and esparto grass (quite varietal), intermixed with notes of black olives, tomato juice and a spicy touch. The palate is not very sweet, it's very tasty, with some tannins that make it a little difficult to combine with food, perhaps dark chocolate or hard paste cheeses. 3,256 half-liter bottles produced. As a curiosity, I tasted a kind of Fondillón they still keep in small barriques from the 1970s, with a rancio profile, that reminded me of the old bottlings I tasted from Bodegas Monovar. - Luis Gutiérrez.