Bodegas Frontonio La Loma y Los Santos White 2023

Bodegas Frontonio La Loma y Los Santos White 2023

Bodegas Frontonio
$85.00

Grape: Macabeo, Garnacha Blanca
Vintage: 2023
Type: White

Sourced from historic, high-altitude plots in Valdejalón, this white field blend comes from dry-farmed old vines rooted in steep slate, limestone, and clay soils. Master of Wine Fernando Mora hand-harvests the co-planted macabeo and garnacha blanca, subjecting the fruit to a natural fermentation with native yeasts in neutral wooden casks and subterranean concrete vessels. The wine ages on its fine lees without new oak to allow the stark hillside minerality and high-elevation climate to take center stage. Bottled unfined and unfiltered with minimal sulfur, this is a tactile, deeply textured Spanish white focused on site-driven freshness and tension.

A pale yellow-gold hue opens to aromatics of bruised green apple, white peach, lemon oil, and crushed slate. The palate is dry, dense, and structured, offering focused flavors of yellow plum, raw almond, chamomile, and salt-cured citrus. A driving beam of natural acidity cuts through the wine's broader leesy weight, keeping the mouthfeel crisp, energetic, and linear. It concludes on a long, mouthwatering finish defined by a firm phenolic grip, lingering citrus zest, and a persistent stony minerality.

Winery

Bodegas Frontonio is the Aragón project of Fernando Mora MW and Mario López, based around Alpartir and its surrounding mountain vineyards. Garnacha and Macabeo are central to a range built around old bush vines and the differences between individual sites. The vineyards lie at elevations ranging from roughly 460 to more than 1,000 meters, with a mixture of soils that includes limestone-rich clay and slate. Farming follows organic and biodynamic principles, with vineyard tasks and harvesting carried out by hand.

In the cellar, fermentation vessels include concrete, clay jars and wood, selected according to the wine rather than a single house recipe. Historic seventeenth-century caves provide a setting for slow aging, and gravity helps move the wines gently. The range moves from village expressions such as the Microcósmico bottlings toward more specific vineyards and historic parcels. That progression makes Frontonio a useful introduction to Aragón’s mountain wine culture, showing the freshness and detail that can come from Garnacha and Macabeo when the vineyard remains the focus.