Tarima Alicante Bouschet

When Rafael Cañizares and Jorge Ordóñez founded Bodegas Volver in 2004, their stated ambition was to rescue near-abandoned old-vine plots that co-operatives had written off as uneconomic — including the Alicante Bouschet vines planted between 1980 and 1985 across the sierras of Salinas, Umbría, and La Sima that form the backbone of Tarima. These ungrafted plots sit at 600–750 m elevation on shallow limestone and rocky soils with negligible organic matter, a combination that forces roots deep, suppresses vigour, and concentrates the grape's naturally high anthocyanin load into yields as low as 1.5 kg per plant. The altitude moderates the fierce Levante heat, preserving acidity that the variety rarely achieves at lower sites. In the cellar, hand-harvested fruit is sorted on a selection table before primary fermentation in open-top stainless steel tanks at ~28°C with indigenous yeast, then moved to French oak barriques for malolactic fermentation — a deliberate choice to knit the variety's characteristically dense tannin into the oak structure from the outset rather than after the fact. What makes this expression categorically unusual is the grape itself: Alicante Bouschet is a teinturier — one of the very few varieties with red-pigmented flesh, not just skin — producing a depth of colour and iron-mineral density that no Monastrell or Garnacha Tintorera blend can replicate. The 2020 vintage, drawn from a dry-farmed, organically managed Levante growing season, delivers a wine of dark-fruited concentration with the structural grip to develop over the medium term.