Rafa Nadal wine: El Tenista, an organic Monastrell from Jumilla

The first Rafa Nadal wine is El Tenista, an organic red made entirely from Monastrell in Jumilla with Viñas Familia Gil, the family behind Bodegas Juan Gil. Nadal announced it on social media on 13 October; Spanish press reports put the bottle at around €60.

According to Murciadiario and Murcia Plaza, the grapes come from ungrafted vines more than 50 years old in the Término de Arriba of Jumilla, at about 750 metres, on chalky soils poor in nutrients. The wine is aged in new barrels; Infobae gives about 18 months in new French oak and a yield of around 700 grams of grapes per vine. It is a limited edition and the first release of Dominio del Liftado, a project to recover old Jumilla vineyards.

Neither the vintage nor the number of bottles has been published. The price of about €60 appears in Infobae and OKdiario, which say it is sold in specialist shops, without naming one. The label is white, with a symbol of a ball bouncing on clay.

A tennis player's name on a Monastrell label, and the number of bottles still kept quiet.

What the Rafa Nadal wine tastes like on paper

The tasting note, which Murcia Plaza attributes to winemaker Bartolomé Abellán, lists black fruit, blackberries and ripe plums, scrubland herbs, vanilla and sweet spice, a medium-to-full body, soft tannins and a long finish. That describes most oaked Monastrell from the area; the bottle will have to make the rest of the case.

"Some projects excite you in a special way, and this is one of them," Nadal wrote, as quoted by EFE and COPE. He added that he was happy to learn from a family with so much experience.

Juan Gil, the Jumilla appellation and Nadal's other tables

Bodegas Juan Gil was founded in Jumilla in 1916 by Juan Gil Jiménez and is now run by the fourth generation, EFE reports; the family has vineyards in almost every Spanish denomination of origin. The DOP Jumilla, set up in 1961, straddles the Region of Murcia and the province of Albacete, with about 22,000 hectares of vineyard planted between 320 and 1,000 metres and 38 registered wineries, according to its regulatory council. Around 1,000 of those hectares are still on their own roots, like the vines behind this Rafa Nadal wine.

Wine is a new line for Nadal, who retired in 2024 at 38 with 92 ATP titles, 22 of them Grand Slams. Hospitality is not: Mallorca Magazin lists him as a co-owner of the Tatel restaurants and as partner of Meliá in the ZEL hotel brand. Spain already sells itself through wine, as its official wine routes, now 40, show. The figure still missing is the simplest one: how many bottles there are.