Bodegas Frontonio

Fernando Mora MW is the engineer-turned-winemaker behind the wines of Bodegas Frontonio. He is now regarded as one of the foremost garagiste winemakers in Aragón, in northeastern Spain. His wines have achieved international recognition from critics including Luis Gutiérrez from the Wine Advocate, and Jancis Robinson MW. Fernando started his career with just a handful of vines in his grandparents garden, which he made into wine in the bathtub. He now works with an impressive 55 hectares of bush-trained vines, most of which are organically certified, in the region’s mountainous vineyards. He has two sites: Valdejalón, whose vines - Garnacha (Grenache), Macabeo and local varieties - are cooled by the Cierzo wind and lie between 450 and 1030 metres above sea level and El Jardín de las Iguales. Here, the century-old vines are nestled in the winding Barrandijos valley. Fernando’s hands-on, garagiste-approach has never changed. His grapes are hand-harvested and he uses the traditional foot-stomping technique to crush the grapes, which he makes into wines in his 200-year-old underground cellar which is laid out over three floors allowing him to use gravity to transport the juice.