Bodegas Frontonio

Bodegas Frontonio is the visionary project of young Fernando Mora MW, and his viticulture partner Mario López. Fernando’s began his professional life as an engineer and has since become one of the shining winemaking minds in all of Spain with María José López de Heredia proclaiming “…if there is one person in the wine world that I recommend following it is Fernando Mora, because he gives me hope for the future of the world of wine in Spain”. Since opening Bodegas Frontonio in 2010, Mora has been awarded the Master of Wine title, earning special distinction for his written theory on Garnacha and vineyard history.

All of Frontonio’s vineyards are located in IGP Valdejalón, a small, non-DO appellation located directly southwest of Zaragoza, the capital of Aragón and (to many) the recognized birthplace of Garnacha. As a native to the area, Fernando’s intuition was that this tiny, mountainous area has the potential to produce world class wines and is therefore the only winery we know of labeling wines from this IGP. Valdejalón boasts a classic mediterranean climate and celebrates a dizzying display of elevation change and soil patterns, which allow Mario and Mora to showcase a broad array of vineyard character in a such tiny geographical area. They own fifty hectares of beautiful, organically certified, biodynamically farmed, old bushvine vineyards located between 350m and 1030m above sea level planted to rocky clay, limestone and schist. The wines are all fermented and aged in a garage winery located in the scarcely populated village of Alpartir where the small winery sits atop three levels of old, hand-carved caves where his wines refine at ideal, natural temperature and humidity conditions. These scintillating wines are some of the very best made today east of Rioja and west of Conca, garnering effusive praise from the likes of Luis Gutiérrez, Jancis Robinson and more

Via his celebrated Master of Wine treatise, Fernando has implemented a unique classification for his vineyards that mimic the Burgundian distinction of village, premier cru and grand cru sites: V1 represents village vineyards, V2 represents 1er cru and V3 represents Grand Cru. Each specific wine is garnished with one of the “V” rankings in a deliberate attempt to refocus the conversation surrounding Spanish wine quality from elevage (crianza, reserva, gran reserva) to vineyard source. A true visionary.