Winemaker Notes
A great match for spicy cured meats, seafood stews, or fritto misto.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2012 vintage was extremely dry and the head-pruned, dry-farmed vineyards really suffered, they had no more than 250 liters of rain in the whole growing season. In such dry conditions the Estrecho de la Pipa vineyards at 700 meters altitude behaved better than the Las Quebradas, because of the cooler sandy soils in the former. That allowed them to produce a 2012 Estrecho, selecting the bunches, as any overripe fruit is destined for the production of (a yet to be released) Fondillón. Pepe Mendoza thinks 2012 is riper and warmer, but I feel better freshness here than in 2011; perhaps it’s that they have been simplifying things throughout the years, and they are slowly getting to the essence of the grapes and the places. The wine has a lot less impact from the oak and a lighter structure, fruit of a softer vinification. For comparison's sake I also tasted 2009, a balanced vintage, less ripe than 2012, that is aging nicely in bottle, developing nuances and complexity and more notes from the landscape, rockrose, pine needle, a little minty, aromatic and balsamic with a long life ahead. The next vintage will be 2014 (which I also finally tasted for this article), because in 2013 they had a bad hailstorm and they lost all the grapes from Estrecho; in fact they lost 200,000 kilos of grapes during that vintage!
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.