Wine from Alicante is really on the up these days. But it hasn’t always been that way. For decades, the famous names of Rioja and Ribera del Duero grabbed all the attention.

Now Alicante’s best wines are gaining favour – robust but classy reds from the interior, more delicate whites from the coast, plus some truly great dessert wines. Try visiting a bodega (or two) and taste for yourself!

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Here are those we’ve visited and tasted so far. I’ve grouped them according to the different regions of the Alicante DO area (see map above), so you don’t have to travel a long way between bodegas.

Click/tap on the links to jump straight to the region or the individual bodega.

No fancy tasting notes, I’m afraid, but I have tried to pick a few winners!

Vinalopó

Named after the Vinalopó river, which flows through the heart of the area. Home to many of Alicante’s best reds. Jump straight to the Vinolopó section here.

• Bodegas Volver: near Pinoso. They make Tarima, one of the few Alicante Monastrell reds widely sold in the UK
• Bodega Francisco Gomez: near Villena, a winery where appearances are deceptive
• Bodegas Monóvar: just outside the town of the same name – spiritual home of fondillón
• Primitivo Quiles: also in Monóvar, one of the oldest bodegas in the Valencia region.
• Bodegas Bocopa: just outside Petrer, the biggest winery by far in the Alicante DO

Marina Baja

The coastal zone around Benidorm and our town of Villajoyosa. Jump to the Marina Baja section here.

• Bodega Enrique Mendoza: in Alfaz del Pi, a pioneer of the Alicante wine revival
• Mas de Sella: an excellent small-scale family bodega with vineyards at 900 metres. Made in Villajoyosa!
• Celler Mar de Vins: La Nucía near Benidorm, a garage-bodega winning plaudits from some top restaurants

Marina Alta

In the north of the Alicante wine region, centred on the Jalón (Xaló) valley, running inland from Calpe. Jump to the Marina Alta section here.

• Bodega Gutierrez de la Vega: Parcent. Distinctive wines from a distinctive winemaker.
• Bodega Pepe Mendoza: Lliber near Jalón. Son of Enrique Mendoza, Pepe is a rising wine star in his own right
• Bodegas Xaló: Jalón. Local co-operative, great for budget wine, good vermouths and mistelas

Tap here to jump to maps of the bodegas we’ve visited.

Vinalopó

Let’s start in the biggest part of the Alicante wine region, sub-divided into Alto/Medio/Bajo Vinalopó. The home of Monastrell, signature red wine grape of Alicante (also known as Mourvèdre or Mataro outside Spain). Monastrell is really well adapted to the drier, hotter uplands of the Vinalopó.

Bodegas Volver

I guess the first thing that got us interested in Bodegas Volver was the name of one of their best known reds – Tarima Hill. It sounds more like something from South Australia than eastern Spain. And one of their other wines is weirdly named Wrongo Dongo. Not very Spanish at all.

Both are made by Bodegas Volver, a group with wineries in Alicante, La Mancha and Jumilla. They even offer a Verdejo – verdejos are flavour of the month in Spain at the moment. Everyone seems to be making one.

Their Pinoso winery sits a couple of kilometres outside the village in the rolling countryside of the Medio Vinalopó, amid marble quarries, vineyards and olive trees. Bodegas Volver has been going since 2004.

Tarima Hill Monastrell is a very likeable and muscular red, made from old vines up to 90 years old from various parts of the Vinalopó Medio. Its 2015 vintage was included in the top 100 wines worldwide by Wine Spectator and chalks up an impressive 92 points in the Guia Peñin.

There’s also a Tarima white, a pleasant blend of Chardonnay and Merseguera, with notes of apricot.

So how did they pick on the Tarima Hill name? Sadly, it seems more like a marketing ploy aimed at the US market than a good story.

There’s talk that it may have come from a collaboration with the well-known Juan Gil winery in the next door Jumilla region (Gil is pronounced Hill in Spanish). No-one was able to tell me where the Tarima bit came from though (tarima means flooring in Spanish).

And how about Wrongo Dongo? A young 100% Monastrell, by the way. The doubtful explanation we got was that one oenologist tried to describe the wine as “bien redondo” (well-rounded), but after a glass or two too many, it came out as ‘wrongo dongo’.

There’s not much vineyard to see – the grapes come from all over the Vinalopó and Almansa to be vinified here – but the tasting is good value at €18 per person.

The tasting

We sampled a range of six wines, including a pleasant young Moscatel/Mersguera blend (Tarima Mediterráneo, now one of our favourites for light summer drinking), and Triga, a pricey and powerful (16%) Monastrell/Cabernet Sauvignon from some of the oldest vines, including one viñedo planted in 1925.

I’d also recommend Paso a Paso, an organic Tempranillo. The 2015 version achieved 90 points on the Guia Peñin.

Bodega Francisco Gomez

Things are not quite as they seem at this handsome bodega in the Alt Vinalopó, a few kilometres outside Villena. The main building of weathered stone and the cobbled courtyard both look like they’ve been there forever.

But the bodega facade was originally a mansion from sherry country in Andalucia, brought here stone by stone and faithfully reconstructed. The cobbles came from a village square flooded by a dam in Extremadura, over in the west of Spain near the Portuguese border.

Only the huge hanging racimo de uvas sculpture and the lofty lookout tower are clues that this bodega is modern, built as recently as 2000, with the first vendimia (harvest) not until 2004.

Francisco Gomez himself made his money in construction, and used it to expand Finca La Serrata into a modern winery. It has 250 hectares (620 acres) of vineyards and 350 hectares of olive groves, both run on ecological and organic principles.

Red wine grapes include Monastrell, Petit Verdot, Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon. Whites include Moscatel d’Alejandria, Moscatel Grano Menudo and Sauvignon Blanc. Grapes are harvested at night to keep the sugar levels high.

Francisco Gomez make sparkling wines (vinos espumosos) using traditional cava/champagne methods, though of course they can’t be called cava, because cava comes only from Catalonia.

The wines

Their ‘Queen of Kings Blanc de Noir’ is made from 100% Monastrell – normally a red wine grape, but the skins are removed from the juice very quickly after the grapes have been pressed (hence ‘blanc de noir‘)

I liked their young Boca Negra red (Petit Verdot/Syrah), and though I’m not a big rosé fan, the Fruto Noble Rosado (Monastrell/Syrah) was fun to drink.

They started making fondillón – the classic dessert wine unique to Alicante – here in 2008, so they’re relative newcomers to the exclusive fondillón producers’ club. Their fondillón is produced using the solera principle, similar to the way sherry is made. Judging by the price tag and the very fancy bottles, it’s clearly aimed at wealthy overseas clients.

The ‘madre‘ – the original fondillon used to start the solera – dates from 1972. Sadly the bodega tour didn’t run to a glass of fondillón, so I can’t tell you how it compares with others I’ve tried.

Serious wine lovers with deep pockets can store their wines at the bodega in ‘nichos‘ – something I’ve never come across before. Row after row of private vaults where you can keep your finest vintages in perfect cellar conditions and bring your friends over for a tasting.

The estate also produces excellent olive oils. I’d recommend their Extra Virgin ‘Black’, a blend of Arbequina and Picual olives. The embutidos – the charcuterie that accompanies the tasting – were among the best we’ve tasted, coming from ibérico pigs reared on the estate farm.

Bodegas Monóvar

This bodega is housed in an ultra-modern building in the middle of rolling vineyards of Monastrell grapes, just outside the wine town of Monóvar .

Bodegas Monóvar is worth a visit because of its role in rescuing fondillón, the dessert wine that is completely unique to Alicante. The fondillón in the cellars is a lot older than the shiny new bodega itself!

Read more about this remarkable wine and how it came back from the brink of extinction in my post here. Book yourself on a fondillón tour. Fascinating stuff.

The bodega is now part of the MG Wines group that runs a number of vineyards and bodegas across the region. You can buy a selection of their wines in the bodega shop, though none of them are actually made at Monóvar itself.

Primitivo Quiles

The downside of this bodega in Monóvar is that they don’t do tours. The upside is that they make very good wine, and you can drop in, taste and buy direct.

Primitivo Quiles is a family firm and one of the oldest bodegas in the Comunidad Valenciana. You’ll find it next to the old bullring as you drive into Monóvar from Alicante.

Their Monastrell/Merlot Roble red and their Raspay Reserva (100% Monastrell) are both good. King Juan Carlos was served Raspay Reserva the first time he visited Alicante – hence the Spanish colours on the bottle.

Try also their excellent Moscatel Extra dessert wine, made from the Moscatel Romano grape. Sometimes moscatel dessert wines can be over-the-top-sweet. Not this one. One of the best I’ve tried, with a beautiful amber colour to match.

Star of the show is their fondillón, made with the sherry-style solera system. The oldest barrel (tonel El Abuelo) started production in 1892 and is still going strong. Oh, and their vermouth is one of our favourites.

Bocopa

Bocopa is a seriously big operation. They produce more wine in the Alicante DO than anyone else; 40% of the total. They make a wide range – red, white and naturally sparkling – at their bodega just outside Petrer, in the heart of the Vinalopó..

Bocopa was formed 30 years ago by half a dozen wineries across the Alicante region.

Their best-known wine is Marina Alta, a young and fruity moscatel white, a regular on Costa Blanca seaside restaurant menus. They make a million bottles of it per year, so they’re clearly doing something right. Look for the clever anchor symbol on the label that turns pink when it’s chilled to the right temperature (7-8°).

Try also the Reserva from the Laudum range: a smooth red made from 50% Monastrell, 25% Merlot, 25% Cabernet Sauvignon, aged in French and American oak barrels for 12 months and 3 years in the bottle.

Bocopa run a range of wine tours, starting at €9.50 per person, which includes a tasting of three wines from their range at the end.

Bocopa also make a limited amount of fondillón, the traditional dessert wine unique to Alicante. It’s great that they’re dedicating time and effort to keeping this remarkable wine alive, but I’d say it’s not the best fondillón you can buy.

Marina Baja

Head away from the heat and the altitude of the Vinalopó down to the relative cool of the coastal plain. Here you’ll find the Marina Baja, a zone with its own microclimate and some very interesting wines.

Bodega Enrique Mendoza

This is where the Alicante wine revival really got going, thanks to Enrique Mendoza himself. Head for the small town of Alfaz del Pi, a few kilometres inland from Benidorm, and the handsome bodega he founded.

Here on the coastal strip, you find more white wine than red. Much of it is produced from the Moscatel de Alejandria grape, which gives the local wines a distinctive fruity taste. Moscatel is nicely adapted to the hot summers, with lots of night-time humidity and the salty atmosphere by the sea.

Enrique Mendoza’s reds, like most Alicante’s vinos tintos, come from the Vinolopó.

The vineyard is run on environmentally friendly lines, with natural fertilisers and without insecticides and pesticides.

There’s a decent tour, followed by a tasting with a selection of cheese and cold meats.

The wine that left a real impression on me is Dolç de Mendoza, a naturally sweet (but not overly so) red dessert wine from the Alt Vinolopó.

It’s not made every year, as the overripe grapes stay on the vine until December to maximise sugar content. A blend of merlot, cabernet sauvignon, syrah and pinot noir, its cherry and caramel aftertaste goes brilliantly with dark puro chocolate (from Villajoyosa of course!)

I’m also a fan of their unoaked young chardonnay. And try the light La Tremenda Macabeo-Moscatel.

Mas de Sella

The only bodega that has Villajoyosa – our town – on the label. Mas de Sella is a small, family-run winery producing some excellent reds.

The vinification happens in Villajoyosa (La Vila Joiosa in Valenciano, or La Vila for short), but the grapes are actually grown up in the hills, a full 900 metres above sea level, near the  little village of Sella – hence the name.

The vineyard started life as a family project in 2004, with the first harvest in 2007. Unusually for this part of the world, they don’t use the classic red wine grape variety of Alicante, Monastrell, because it doesn’t suit the lower temperatures and higher humidity found so high up.

Instead they use a mixture of vines. There’s Cabernet Sauvignon, along with Cabernet Franc, the dark-fleshed Garnacha Tintorera (aka Alicante Bouschet) and a French variety I’d never heard of called Marselán, a cross between Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache.

The vines grow in a natural amphitheatre up in the hills, with different grape varieties planted on each terrace. The bodega is run on strictly ecological principles and there’s no irrigation.

The old farmhouse (the ‘Mas’ in Valenciano) and the land around it was bought back in the 1940s by the great grandfather of the current generation, and used as a family weekend home.

Now the vineyard produces between 5-8,000 bottles a year of four different multi-varietal wines, vinified in a small industrial unit on the outskirts of La Vila.

The bodega uses naturally occurring native yeasts for fermentation, which means the wines can taste slightly different from year to year. Wines undergo a secondary (or malolactic) fermentation to tone down the acidity.

The tasting

Niu, the youngest, is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah, with 6 months maturing in the bottle.

Mas de Sella is the first wine the bodega produced. It’s a blend of all five grape varieties grown on the vineyard, but they’re fermented separately and aged for 11 months in French oak barrels. Watch out for the intense aroma of blackcurrants.

Then there are two heavyweight wines, both with plenty of character. Firstly Sinto Centella,, a blend of Cabernet Franc and Marselàn fermented in oak barrels rather than stainless steel tanks. At 15.5% alcohol, it’s a wine with body. It’s named for the great grandpa who bought the place originally – Sinto is short for his name Jacinto.

Finally there’s Mas de Sella Carreró (Carreró is the name of the farmer who sold the family the Mas de Sella property), a blend of all five grape varieties. Matured from 18-24 months in barrel.

It’s only made in years where the weather allows sobre maduracion – leaving the grapes longer on the vine so they become over-ripe. They haven’t made this wine for the last eight years because the conditions haven’t been right.

There are tours of the bodega in Villajoyosa (though not currently of the vineyard up in the hills, which is a bit of a shame) with tastings + tapitas. Link here.

Celler Mar de Vins

Mar de Vins is a garage/bodega, making wine in the less-than-glamorous surroundings of an industrial unit on the outskirts of Benidorm.

Here the wine is artesano. Made on a defiantly small scale – organic, sustainable and made with naturally occurring yeasts.

It’s pretty good too. All but one of their wines hits 90 points or more on the Guia Peñin. They’re also on the wine lists of a clutch of Michelin-starred restaurants in this part of Spain.

That’s really impressive for a bodega that only produced its first wine in 2019. Especially as their first harvest was hit by terrible weather and only produced 2,000 bottles

Mar de Vins even has a wine that matures underwater, 30 metres beneath the waves. More of that shortly.

The bodega is run by a couple, oenologist Celeste Fernández and musician-turned-winemaker Kiko Ripoll.

Their vines grow in two places; the little village of Turis inland from Valencia and near Benissa in the Marina Alta. And the grape choices are very different. Malvasia for the white wines, which we’ve come across mostly in the Canary Islands, and Giró for the reds, which you’ll find mostly in Cataluña or the Balearic Islands. The vines are old and low yielding.

The idea is to restore traditional styles of winemaking to this part of Spain, and these vines have been around for centuries.

Malvasia was apparently imported from Greece by King Pedro IV of Aragon, who just happened to be Duke of Athens for a time in the 1380s. And Giró came with the Mallorcans who were brought over to re-populate this area after the wholesale expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain in 1609.

The wines!

There’s Alguer, a really nice young white from those Malvasia grapes, matured for 9 months on lees. The name comes from the meadows of Posidonia sea grass that grow along the Costa Blanca shore.

There’s an orange wine, (Ermità) which spends 30 days on the grape skins after fermentation to produce the distinctive colour. They only make 400 bottles of this a year. Then there’s Els Fustals, again from Malvasia grapes, aged in oak barrels for 8 months.

The Mar de Vins we tasted was a really nice 2022 red, with only 13% alcohol. That’s unusual, because it’s made mostly with Monastrell grapes (70%). Monastrell in the heat of an Alicante summer usually guarantees 14-15% alcohol. Here though, they pick the grapes earlier and blend them with 30% Giró.

L’illot and L’illeta are red wines named after the tiny islands off the beach of Altea. L’illot is 100% Giró on vines planted in 1947. Grapes are picked at night, fermented with the stems on, matured for 10 months in the barrel.

L’illeta is 100% Tempranillo – a surprise, as it’s normally the go-to grape of the Rioja, not this part of the world.

Fascinating fact!

Finally, there’s that submerged wine I mentioned earlier. It sounds wacky, but the idea is to see how wine matures 30 metres beneath the Mediterranean where there’s little light and a constant temperature of 13 degrees, with the wine rocked gently by the current.

It’s an experiment – 150 bottles, both red and white in cages in the latest test. Alas, we didn’t get to try it but apparently there is a noticeable difference in side-by-side tasting with the same wine matured on land.

Visits to the bodega (not the vineyard) with tastings of four wines are €20pp. More here.

Marina Alta

Head further up the coast, to the other side of the Sierra Bernia. Here you’ll find the Marina Alta, centred around the town of Jalón (Xaló) and the surrounding pueblos.

Bodega Gutierrez de la Vega

The wines from this bodega in the tiny village of Parcent come with plenty of character, just like their creator, Felipe Gutierrez de la Vega.

Parcent is in the Marina Alta, home of the moscatel grape, and I think the dessert wines they make at this family-run bodega are among the best you’ll find anywhere.

They also have an interesting range of reds, including their unusual Rojo y Negro Tinto, made 100% from the Giró grape. That’s rare in this part of the world (Giró is mostly from Mallorca/Cataluña).

It’s all in the name!

As soon as you see the labels on the bottles, you sense there’s something a little different going on here. Nearly all the names have literary or musical connections.

From Casta Diva moscatel whites named for Maria Callas and Monserrat Caballé, to an Ulises red in honour of James Joyce’s Ulysses. There’s even an Imagine Giró red, named by Felipe for John Lennon.

Felipe Gutierrez de la Vega started making wine in the early 70s near Jávea, moving to an old olive oil mill in Parcent in 1982. He clearly has his own way of doing things, which is one reason why he parted company a few years back from the Alicante Denominación de Origen (DO), which regulates wine making here. You sense this is a man with a fiercely independent streak.

The wine tour (€20) will leave you with some real tasting highlights that linger. The range and elegance of the moscatel dessert wines is impressive. Try Esencia, made from desecada grapes (allowed to become almost raisins for maximum sugar content). Also the Cosecha Real (Royal Vintage) served at the 2004 wedding of King Felipe of Spain.

Bodega Pepe Mendoza

Pepe Mendoza is a chip off the old block. His father Enrique, who we saw earlier in this post, was the leading pioneer in raising the status of Alicante wine over the last few decades.

Pepe made wines with his dad for more than 20 years, but now runs his own place in the Jalón valley, a short drive inland from Calpe.

His Casa Agricola bodega near Lliber has only been going seven years, but he’s already made something of a name for himself as one of the leading winemakers in this part of the world. His wines score comfortably above 90 points on the Guia Peñin.

The vines are in two plots – Giró, Moscatel and Viognier on the terraces surrounding the bodega itself, and Monastrell and Alicante Bouschet in the Alt Vinolopó, the hot, dry interior of Alicante province. All are Mediterranean grape varieties grown in this part of the world for centuries.

The cultivation is completely ecológico. In fact, Casa Agricola just won ‘most sustainable bodega in Spain’ 2024. No pesticides or herbicides and no irrigation of the vines either.

The bodega is small-scale; production is only 120,000 bottles a year. Up till now, the vinification happened in premises in nearby Jalón, but production will be moving to Lliber this year.

Tasting the wines

We tried the Casa Agrícola red, a nicely-balanced blend of Monastrell and Alicante Bouschet from the interior, with the Giró grapes grown at Lliber. The white is a blend of the aromatic Moscatel de Alejandría grape with Macabeo, Merserguera and Viognier.

Their Pureza white is 100% Moscatel, aged for six months in large amphoras, is a ‘brisado’ or ‘brisat’ wine, where the grapes spend more time on the skins, rather in the style of an orange wine.

Also included in the tasting was a 100% Giró red, Giró de Abargues (Abargues was the name of the family that owned the finca before Pepe Mendoza bought it).

You don’t often find 100% Giró wines in the Alicante region – the colour is paler than you’d expect, but there’s plenty of body there.

And there’s the rather scarily-named El Veneno (literally, The Poison), a muscular Monastrell.

Why the name? Apparently the man who sold Mendoza the plot in the Alt Vinalopó was a grumpy old git, not at all popular with the neighbours, who nicknamed him El Veneno. Nothing wrong with the wine named after him though! Aged for 12 months in oak barrels.

Last on the tasting list was a pleasantly smooth Moscatel dessert wine, which I can see going well with dark chocolate.

The tour and tastings isn’t the cheapest you’ll find (€25pp), but the embutidos are good, the vineyard – in the shadow of the Sierra Bernia mountain – is beautiful and the wines are great.

Bodegas Xaló

This Marina Alta bodega in the town of Xaló (aka Jalon) lies a few kilometres inland from Calpe and just down the road from Parcent.

It’s a co-operative of producers from around the town. They have a wide range of local wines, mistelas (sweet dessert wines; a regional speciality) and vermouths on offer.

You’ll find plenty of expats and tourists arriving clutching plastic bottles, which they fill up with cheap and cheerful reds and whites directly from the barrel. Great for summer drinks like sangria or tinto de verano (young red wine mixed with Spanish soda and ice, sometimes with a squeeze or two of lemon).

But the better wine from this bodega comes in glass bottles, not plastic. Try the fruity aromatic Bahia de Denia white, made from the moscatel grape. It’s an interesting combination with fish or seafood, instead of the usual dry white. The Castell d’Aixa crianza (Garnacha/Tempranillo) is also worth a try.

There’s a guided tour and tasting of the bodega wines. Link here As a bonus, you can usually buy super-cheap fruit in season from local sellers in the car park outside.

More wineries to try!

There are plenty more bodegas to try in this part of the world – a total of 41 in the Alicante DO (Denominación de Origen). Not all do tours or tastings though.

And there are a fair few wineries that choose to remain outside the DO, experimenting with different wine varieties or innovative production methods.

The one thing that unites them all is a passion for making wine. And they’re usually good at communicating their enthusiasm – which is why visiting a bodega is one of my favourite things to do!

El Comtat

There’s one part of the Alicante wine region that we still have to explore – the interior around the towns of Alcoy and Cocentaina. Which is why I haven’t included any of the bodegas from that part of the world!

Note: this post was revised and updated in spring 2024 – some of the content appeared in an earlier version.

A bodega map

These are the wineries we’ve tried so far. There are actually two maps because Google won’t let me put them all on one map. The first covers the Vinalopó and Marina Baja. The second covers the Marina Alta.

Want to know more about Spanish food & drink?

• Fondillón – the Alicante wine that nearly died
• The craft beer revolution in Spain
• Manchego – the king of Spanish cheeses
• The best paella and rice dishes
• Find your way around a fish or seafood menu in Spanish

© Guy Pelham