El Sequé · 2022

We often ask ourselves how can the same grape variety produce such different wines. Each vineyard undoubtedly has its own expression, the terroir... but when origins are very close and similar, evidence points to the producer's skill and expertise. A good example: El Sequé. Include it in a Monastrell tasting and you'll understand. El Sequé is a superior category Monastrell, a robust wine, classy, serious, powerful and excellent for cellaring, like all wines aged in barrel and bearing the Artadi signature. El Sequé is made using grapes from a selection of old vineyards which Artadi owns in a place of the same name, in the region of Alicante, a wine-producing land since Phoenician and Roman times, with several thousand years of vine-growing tradition. These are the origins of this wine, which appears a very vivid purple colour in its youth, bright and very primary on the nose, with the most intense aromas of well-ripened plums and cherries, sweet fruit, notes of toasted bread, earth and wild flowers, and with some gentle menthol hints which imbue the wine with a very definite balsamic character. Overall, a red with clear signs of Mediterranean identity. On the palate, El Sequé is very harmonious, warm, rounded, dense and incredibly young, although with the oak already very well integrated... and that smoothness, that amazingly soft texture, so "Artadi", a velvety mouthfeel. You couldn't go wrong if you kept this wine until it had matured in bottle for at least a couple of years; invest a bit of time, wait awhile for the pleasure, and it will reward you with greater complexity and refinement.