Winemaker Notes
It has aromas of ripe redcurrant, blackberry and memories of eucalyptus and blood orange. In mouth it is an earthy wine, with a perfect assembly between the tannins of the fruit and the wood. It is a round wine that combines an elegant lightness with a persistent finish of ripe fruit. Elegant and tasty.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
There is no wine from the 2016 vintage from Ribeira Sacra, so I tasted the 2017 El Pecado, from the same vineyard that produces the Finca Capeliños from Guímaro. This is always a more elegant style of red, and it fermented with some 65% full clusters and had a softer extraction. This 2017 reminds me of the 2015, with heady aromas of flowers, wild berries, spices and earth and a powerful, vibrant palate that reveals great finesse and very good freshness for a warm year. There are abundant, very fine tannins that might require some more time in bottle, and it has long, dry, salty and mineral finish.
Rating: 96(+?)
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Wine & Spirits
Raúl Pérez made his first vintage of El Pecado (the sin) in 2005, after finding this 1.2-acre plot of 100-year-old vines planted on steep black-slate slopes above the Sil River. The vines are mostly mencía interspersed with bastardo, garnacha tintorera, caíño and brancellao. In 2017, the wine is fragrant with scents of roses, coriander and pork stock, a completely different expression of the region than the 2017 La Penitencia. Its rocky slate tannins fill the mouth with flavors of ripe red currants and bright blackberries, tight and almost airy as the wine opens along crisply defined lines.
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.