Monopole Clásico

Monopole Clásico is CVNE's remake of the white it sold in the 1960s and 1970s under Spain's oldest registered white-wine name, Monopole, on the books since 1915. The house brought the style back with the 2014 vintage by calling in Ezequiel García, "El Brujo", its winemaker of more than three decades from the 1940s to the 1970s, the era of the wine being recreated. The 2020 Reserva ficha gives the recipe: Viura from the house's own vineyards at Villalba de Rioja in Rioja Alta, just over 5 ha of vines about fifteen years old on limestone at over 600 m, east-facing and trellised for protection from the wind; hand harvest into 20 kg boxes in the first days of October, gentle pressing, must settled in concrete vats as in the 1960s, fermentation in stainless steel, then around eight months with its fine lees in used 300 and 400 l barrels and 500 l botas that had held other wines before, including a period of biological ageing under a layer of flor. 26,294 bottles, bottled January 2023, 13.5% alcohol, total acidity 5.31, pH 3.34. The label calls it Blanco Seco Reserva and the Consejo's back-label seal marks it Reserva from the 2020 harvest, a year the Consejo Regulador rated Very Good; the ficha describes 2020 as a season of rain, occasional hail and mild temperatures in which the whites ripened slowly and were picked selectively. The house's web page, which carries the 2021 sheet, lists the grapes as Viura y otras and says the wine is prepared as it was in the 1970s, where the 2020 ficha and the importer sticker say Viura alone and the 1960s; VinePair's account of the revival adds that the old recipe included a dash of Manzanilla sherry, something the producer's current materials do not mention.