Sedella Las Vinuelas de la Axarquia 2012
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Robert
Parker
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Product of a warm, ripe and early harvest, the 2012 Sedella is the fourth vintage (2011 was not produced) of this field blend of the obscure local red Romé with Garnacha, Jaén, Montua and Moscatel Romano! The grapes are sourced from one hectare of vines planted in 1940 on a north-facing, slate slope at 800 meters altitude, only six kilometers away from the Mediterranean on the natural park of Sierra de Tejeda, province of Málaga. All grapes were hand-harvested and fermented with indigenous yeasts in stainless steel and transferred to used barriques for malolactic and 14-month aging without racking. They used silver coins inside the barrels as silver is a natural antiseptic and preservative, something Lauren Rosillo read in a book and started experimenting and found that it worked. This allows him to work without sulfur until bottling and avoids other issues like brettanomyces. It really feels like the big brother of the 2012 Laderas de Sedella, with those Mediterranean aromas mixed with red berries and a honeyed undertone. But this wine has more depth and also a wider and longer palate with very refined tannins, lively acidity that makes you salivate and is the backbone of the wine that should make it age slowly. A wine full of character, and, I'm tempted to say, good value. This is plain great. I also tasted 2010 and 2008–the first vintage–as a reference, and the wines are developing slowly in bottle, turning spicy and very sapid (umami!). Still, I believe this 2012 is the best vintage so far and is a wine to follow. It is fairly priced for the quality it delivers.
Many of Lauren’s innovations as a winemaker are in fact agricultural innovations. He uses Roman plows and horses rather than tractors to avoid compressing the soil. At its steepest, the slopes are at a 45% grade, but Lauren maneuvers the horses adeptly on the hillsides. The vineyards are organically farmed and certified. Production here is tiny – about 400 cases total.
Spanish red wine is known for being bold, heady, rustic and age-worthy, Spain is truly a one-of-a-kind wine-producing nation. A great majority of the country is hot, arid and drought-ridden, and since irrigation has only been recently introduced and (controversially) accepted, viticulture has sustained—and flourished—only through a great understanding of Spain’s particular conditions. Large spacing between vines allows each enough resources to survive and as a result, the country has the most acreage under vine compared to any other country, but is usually third in production.
Of the Spanish red wines, the most planted and respected grape variety is Tempranillo, the star of Spain’s Rioja and Ribera del Duero regions. Priorat specializes in bold red blends, Jumilla has gained global recognition for its single varietal Monastrell and Utiel-Requena has garnered recent attention for its reds made of Bobal.