Winemaker Notes
Blend: 85% ungrafted Monastrell, 15% Cabernet Sauvignon
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2013 Triga is a blend of Monastrell and Cabernet Sauvignon from five different vineyards, some older and some younger, fermented with indigenous yeasts. It matured in a combination of French and American barriques for some 20 months. It is bottled with a whopping 16% alcohol, which will tell you something about the ripeness of the grapes. The nose is completely dominated by oak aromas, smoke, toast, plenty of spices and even sawdust, that cover the rest of the sensations and make it quite difficult to get to the core of ripe fruit. The palate is also very oaky, but the depth of the fruit provided by the old vines seems to be able to stand the oak regime imparted to the wine here. Ripe, extracted and oaky wine for fans of the style, but you need to cellar it for a couple of years for the effect of the oak to diminish.
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.