Winemaker Notes
Wine for ageing, enormous concentration, complexity and elegance. Sourced from a selection of vines from two of our very best vineyards. Energy, vivacity, excellent fruit weight and suave tannins are combined in a well-rounded wine, fine and enveloping, with multiple layers.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Coming from two vineyards and 100% Tempranillo, the 2017 Mauro VS Vendimia Seleccionada was aged 26 months in French oak. Loaded with blackberry, black cherry, and currant fruit as well as notes of spice and graphite, it's full-bodied and has beautifully integrated oak, silky tannins, and a great finish. As with all these releases from Mauro, it's a ripe, concentrated wine, yet its balance, purity, and tannins are spot on. This beautiful, elegant wine will impress for 10-15 years.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 VS was cropped from a dry year marked by spring frosts that reduced the yield and resulted in their earliest harvest to date. However, the effect of the frost here was different, as they didn't suffer the big frost of the night of the 28th of April; the frost here was on the 1st of May and was not as severe (-2 degrees Celsius), so the grapes were from the first generation, not the second like in some places in Ribera del Duero. They picked the second week of September to preserve the freshness of the grapes and did a short maceration and soft vinification. It's a selection from two 70-year-old vineyards in the village of Traspinedo and Tudela, and it matured in French oak barrels for 26 months. If 2017 was an atypical year, this is atypical within that: the wine is lighter, more aromatic and open with lots of finesse and elegance. It's very approachable and one of the few VS bottlings that delivers instant gratification. A real triumph for the vintage. Rating : 94+
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.