Wines to succeed this festive season for less than 12 euros

The countdown has begun for all social gatherings and hopefully nothing will get in the way. Many of you are already stocking up on good wines for the festive season. Today at Peñín we want to offer a fun and different choice for this Christmas. We have decided to move away from the conventional to show you other options of great Spanish wines. On this occasion we wanted to set a price limit of 12 euros per bottle so that accompanying the holidays with these great wines does not cause a big drop in our finances. Nine wines, all of them with 93 points in the latest edition of the Peñín Guide 2022. Ready?

In Coruña del Conde, in the province of Burgos, is our first proposal for this Christmas. It is a wine that pays tribute to a very local and not very well known variety, the white albillo real. In its beginnings, this winery was advised by the Envinate group, who will also leave us a wine for this Christmas selection. Ermita del Conde Albillo Mayor 2016 is a wine that grows in an extreme continental climate, freezing cold in winter and blazing hot in summer. Altitude of 943 - 1012 metres, limestone soils accompanied by a greater or lesser percentage of sand and sometimes pebbles. All this leads to a powerful wine. Ripe fruit, toasted bread, spices, creamy oak and a fat, structured palate are some of the hallmarks of this wine, a wine capable of taking an important place at our table.

This is a wine with a certain ageing potential. The 2016 vintage is made from Tempranillo grapes grown 5 km from Olmedo (Valladolid), an area usually known for its white wines, as it is one of the villages recognised by the Rueda DO.  The winery is located in what used to be a former Hieronymite monastery, in a unique and exceptional setting. As a curiosity, the complex has been restored and adapted by the architect Rafael Moneo. This house is fundamentally characterised by the production of red wines with great fruit expression and by the search for finesse and elegance through a type of wine that has structure and tannins. This proposal reflects the elegance we have mentioned, with fine and silky tannins, and is accompanied by a fine reduction that makes it very interesting.

Ponce is a winery that has accustomed us to great wines that are highly identified with their place of origin. This family winery has been making sincere and honest wines since its first vintage in 2005, such as this La Xara 2019, which brings us closer to the local vision of an inland Garnacha rich in red fruit and very floral and wild. A tasty wine with good acidity that will serve as an appetizer at some of our soirées. It is a casual and very enjoyable wine.

This is a structured, full-bodied, tasty wine that bears the geographical stamp of Jumilla and its queen of vines, the Monastrell. Bodegas Juan Gil offers us its Silver Label, a wine that comes from a selection of old vines worked at very low yields. This is the most successful wine of this winery because it has an excellent quality-price ratio. An opportunity to dive into the typicality of the Monastrell grape through a winemaking process that respects the identity of the area. 

Under the Almansa appellation grow the garnacha tintorera grapes of our next protagonist today. This is a vineyard planted between 1970 and 1980 in the outskirts of Alpera, on sandy soils with pure limestone rocks. It is one of the latest creations of Rafael Cañizares, a wine that keeps all the identity of the Garnacha Tintorera. A wine with strength and structure that has a marked fruity character (ripe red fruit) and notes of violets and tea leaf. The palate is full-bodied, with toasted notes and ripe tannins.

It is no coincidence that we have another Monastrell from Jumilla in this selection of wines for Christmas. Jumilla has great wines at affordable prices and this one from Casa Castillo is a good example. On this occasion we have chosen a wine from a recent vintage in order to show the Monastrell style in a young vintage, where the characteristic steely notes of the Monastrell will stand out with a marked black fruit character. This is a savoury, mineral and very persistent wine.

Casa Aurora has left us this year with one of the nominees for revelation wine, La Galapana. Today it is the turn of Clos Pepín, its village wine. It is a wine made in the old style, blending different types of grapes; garnacha tintorera, palomino (40%), portuguesa (trousseau), garnacha and mencía, from the old vines of different winegrowers in the Boeza Valley, in the Bierzo region. It is a wine that has been labelled as a table wine and has a marked balsamic character, with mountain herbs and very interesting red fruit intermingled with spices. It is a very gastronomic and casual wine.

Envinate is characterised by seeking the local essence wherever they produce, such as this table wine that we propose today. This is a red wine made from Garnacha Tintorera and Moravia Agria from the Alpera area, where Garnacha Tintorera reigns supreme. The clay-limestone soils and the continental climate are largely responsible for the identity of this wine made in concrete and with a high percentage of stems, which brings freshness and a wild style to the whole. This is a medium-bodied wine, rich in black and red fruit. It is easy to drink and not very interventionist in style. A different way of getting to know Albacete's Garnacha Tintorera from the hands of some excellent creators of singular wines.

Bruno Murciano brings us from his homeland an excellent bobal, casual, fruity and wild. This wine is made with grapes from the Hoces del Cabriel area, from a plot known as Las Brunas. Las Brunas are 7.69 ha of vineyards located on the slopes of a hillside facing south-east on a calcareous clay soil. The vines are surrounded by Mediterranean garrigue, aromatic plants and pines that leave their mark on the wine through some very interesting nuances of wild herbs.