Winemaker Notes
Overflowing fruitiness in a rich and varied aromatic palette. Energetic and classy, with an enveloping texture and formidable persistence.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
I also tasted the 2018 VS, from a cooler and rainier year than 2017 and with an absence of frost, delivering a healthier crop with good natural concentration, finesse and harmony. This wine is sourced from two vineyards, and the grapes were fermented by vineyard in stainless steel with indigenous yeasts and matured in French oak barrels for 26 months. This is very young and primary, with harmonious tannins but in need of time in bottle to deliver what's inside. As with the other 2018s, this has complexity and depth; the wine is juicy, and the tannins are not hard. There is great balance and superb aging potential. 43,362 bottles produced. It was bottled in February 2021.
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Wine Enthusiast
Dark-violet-red in the glass, this wine has a nose of fruit of the wood, purple flowers and elderberry. It enters the palate soft and spicy, with notes of clove and menthol. Luxurious tannins slowly build, bearing flavors of blackberry, black cherry and citrus blossom that fade into a mellow finish. Drink through 2043.
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Wine Spectator
The volume is turned up on the flavors of Kalamata olive, black fig, creamy melted licorice, mocha and Mediterranean scrub in this full-bodied red, with equal amplitude from the dense, plushly textured tannins and underscoring minerality. Lively and expressive throughout, with a cedar-laced, lingering finish. Tempranillo. Best from 2023
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.