Bodegas Primitivo Quiles
Name Winery: Bodegas Primitivo Quiles
Address: Mayor, 4, 03640 Monóvar, Alicante
Telephone: 965 470 099
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Sponsor of Vino Valencia Wine Night at Tahine, December 16, 2009, with:
- Raspay 2003
This family has been in the wine trade in this corner of Alicante since 1780. They have been in their current bodega in Monòver since 1926. The eldest son of the family is traditionally named Primitivo. The most senior current Primitivo is officially taking a back seat, but very much about the place, where he began working in 1951. At the helm are Primitivo jr. and his brother Francisco, keeping and building on the family tradition (and there is a very junior Primitivo scampering about the place as well).
At the core of the bodega’s red wines is the classic Alicante variety, Monastrell. They produce the “vino joven” Cono 4 (100% Monastrell), the Roble (Monastrell 60%, Merlot 40%), a Monastrell Crianza and the Raspay Reserva. This is made in time-honoured fashion, with the wine fermenting in vats under the cellar, before being aged in large barrels and then aged further in bottle. This provides the touch of oxidization that is immediately apparent. But this really acts as a backdrop to the range of flavours that the old-fashioned know-how of this bodega allows their Monastrell to express.
There are various other enticing wines – Moscatels and Vermuths – but the last word must go to their two most venerable wines. These are the Fondillón Gran Reserva Solera 1948 (93 points from Robert Parker’s “Wine Advocate”), Fondillón being a wonderful and for many centuries highly-prized “maderized” wine unique to Alicante, and their frankly epic sweet wine, Gran Imperial.
This bodega and its wines have a timelessness that is a marvel in a world constantly chasing after novelty and fashion, when better than the festive season to enjoy the wines and ponder the truths they convey.
