Winemaker Notes
This wine is very special, with a complexity that makes it different from the rest of wines at the winery. The Pino is made from a single "Bobal vineyard". The wine has a magnificent and minerally personality because it grows on solid rock. With aromas of gypsum and wet chalk, the palate shows great acidity and dried rose petal notes, finishing with a delightful balsamic taste.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This bobal reminds me of a beautifully refined, linear Rhone-style syrah. Meaty aromas of lard and dried herbs, then it becomes floral and spicy, with some vibrant, dark cherry fruit. On the palate this is chalky and vertical, which is much less about fruit fleshiness. Rather, it is a tense and stony wine that’s structured and melted. Amazing value for the money. From organically grown grapes.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2023 Pino, a wine that tends to be quite shy when young but showed quite gentle, comes from a vineyard with a strong character, one hectare planted 40 years ago on limestone soils at 800 meters above sea level. The full clusters fermented in a 4,500-liter oak foudre and matured in an oval 3,500-liter oak vat for 10 months. There's some oak in the nose here, spicy and faintly smoky, a serious profile, with big bones, a medium to full-bodied palate and abundant tannins that need time in bottle to be resolved. A second bottle showed less impact from the wood. It has good ripeness, 13.5% alcohol with a pH of 3.5 and 5.8 grams of acidity. It has very good aging potential. 4,000 bottles were produced. It was bottled in late July 2024. A bottle of 2010 felt young, with intense notes of tapenade and tree bark.
Bobal is enjoying a mini renaissance in Spain today as high-elevation vineyards in its homeland of Utiel-Requena produce dense and velvety wines dominated by dark berry and cocoa characteristics. However, its function as Spain’s second most planted red grape variety was once only for bulk wine and concentrate. Since it is drought-resistant, it does well grown as unirrigated bush vines and acts as a fine voice of terroir. Somm Secret—Bobal also shows great potential for rosé and sparkling wines because of its high levels of acidity and anthocyanins.
The Moors gave it the name, ‘Manxa,’ which fittingly means ‘parched earth.’ La Mancha, the largest Spanish wine producing region in all of Spain, is one of its hottest and driest. Sturdy and drought-resistant white varieietes like Airen, Viura and Verdejo thrive in this environment.