£14.75, Vintage Roots
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I can’t help wondering if I have already found one of my favourite red wines of 2025. I don’t mean the most complex, majestic or ambitious wine I anticipate tasting this year. I’m talking about one of the most upbeat, upliftingly delicious and enjoyable wines.
Generación 73 Garnacha 2020 takes you on a journey of fragrant raspberry, plum and cherry fruit, cool mountain streams and wet stones and a seasoning of pepper and herbs. Tannins and acidity shape it, but they're so smooth and glossy you barely feel them. It's a wine that fills the mouth with a lightness of touch.
Hedonistic as it is, it shouldn’t be underestimated.
The Yago Aznar family of Bodegas Tempore are accomplished growers and winemakers – vine growers around Lécera, about 60km south of Zaragoza, for four generations and winemakers there since 2002, specialising in Garnacha (Grenache), especially from old vines. They have organic, biodynamic and vegan certification.
Generación 73 comes from arid, low-yielding vineyards at 550m asl on limey, sandy, mineral-rich soils. The wine is fermented with indigenous yeasts in stainless steel and matured briefly – just two months – in 500-l new French barrels to give the lightest brushstroke of oak. Bottle age has done the rest.
It's a red you could drink on its own, but in a way it deserves food. I thought the fruit might be too fragrant for very umami dishes but found that both fresh black truffle with pasta and confit de canard worked by bringing out the wine's gentle savoury spice. In contrast, roast Mediterranean vegetables played to its fruity side. Next time, I shall try it with roast monkfish or another meaty fish. 14%. Empty bottle weight: 598g.
Bodegas Tempore Generación 73 Garnacha 2020, Bajo Aragón Spain
£14.75, Vintage Roots