Singing Garnacha
11 October 2019

One of our favourite finds of the past couple of years is 4 Monos, a small producer situated high in the Gredos mountains an hour west of Madrid. 4 Monos translates as “4 Monkeys” and is the brainchild of four friends who met whilst hiking in the Gredos mountains. Husband and wife team Javier Garcia and Laura Robles take care of all the viticulture and winemaking in their small cellar in the village of Cadalso de los Vidrios. They have been gradually scaling up their area under vine with each year, by both planting afresh and restoring the health of some extremely old, complex vineyards in the region, focusing on top-quality Garnacha. 4 Monos now owns six hectares, rent and manage another three, and buy fruit from a further eight hectares, bringing the total up to seventeen hectares.

All viticulture is organic and biodynamic, using no herbicides or synthesised products whatsoever. The wines are fermented naturally and simply with a high proportion of whole bunches and they are aged in neutral barrels for about a year. Today we are offering the latest releases from the 2017 vintage. As a response to bouts of frost in the spring and then a hot, dry summer, which cut yields, Javier and Laura decided to reduce the time spent on the skins from an average of forty five days in 2016 to around thirty, creating bright colours and tannins that have a more “infused” feel and avoid any astringency. There is also a new wine this year called Tierra de Luna; a blend of three vineyards (including young vine Molino Quemado) from the village of San Martin de Valdeiglesias, where the wines have a clearer Mediterranean feel. Tierra de Luna now joins the two other village wines; Cien Lanzas, from Cenicentos, where the style is more crystalline and floral, and Aguja del Fraile, from the home village of Cadalso de los Vidrios, which is a rockier, more mineral style.

We are also delighted to offer two single vineyard bottlings, made in miniscule quantities. Molino Quemado is the best fruit from a one-hectare plot in San Martin, and La Isilla is a hard, white granite dominated site in Cadalso where the vines are an average of ninety years old. Molino is the more scented and seductive, while La Isilla is the racier and more saline. Just one barrel of La Isilla and two barrels of Molino Quemado are produced.