Located in the heart of what was once the Kingdom of Valencia, the Alicante DO is home to some of the oldest wine making traditions in Europe. While what is now the city of Alicante (or Alacant in native Valencian) was founded as a tactical base called Akra Leuka, or “White Point, by legendary Carthaginian conqueror Hamilcar Barca in the 3rd century BCE, the surrounding region has been inhabited since at least the third millennium BCE and probably much earlier. Around the year 715 CE Valencia came under the control of the Umayyad Caliphate during the Muslim Conquest of Hispania and was given its current name, which means “City of Lights” in Arabic.

Following the Reconquista and Spanish unification, Alicante wine making entered its golden age in the 16th century, with its renowned wines being shipped all over Europe by industrious English, Swedish, and Flemish merchants.

While Northern European entrepreneurs might have thrust Alicante wines onto the world stage, it was the Phoenicians who brought wine grapes to Spain from the Levant more than 1500 years prior and with Alicante home to the oldest Phoenician trading settlements in Western Europe, it is also home to Western Europe’s oldest wine making tradition.

That ancient Phoenician history is reflected in the new release from Luis Moya Selections, “Fenicio,” Spanish for Phoenician. The wine is distinctive for the region: it’s made from 100% Tempranillo, unlike most Valencian wines where Monastrell predominates, and is 100% estate grown and bottled, not vinted at massive regional cooperatives. Fenicio is aged only in stainless steel tanks and clocks in at a modest 13.5% alcohol. A huge oaky Valencian fruit bomb this is not–think mellow, medium-bodied Burgundy.

Try a truly unique wine: three thousand years of European wine history in one small bottle.

David Duman