Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2004 Vinsanto 12 Years Barrel Aged is the traditional blend (80% Assyrtiko, 10% each of Athiri and Aidani), aged in used French oak for 144 months. It comes in at 260 grams of residual sugar, 7.44 of total acidity and 13.5% alcohol. The grapes, from very old vineyards (200 years "minimum," the winery says) in Episkopi, were sun-dried for 12 days. The rapidly increasing price references a 500-milliliter bottle, but it is fair to note the very low yields from old vines and the 12 years of aging. Another brilliant 12 Year Vinsanto, this is structured, powerful, burnished and complex. The long and remarkably gripping finish, laced with dried peaches and apricots, a little caramel and maybe a hint of molasses, is delicious. The fruit is beautifully defined by the structure. It lingers endlessly, grabbing the palate, slamming into it and refusing to let go. It might be this wine's best feature, and it might be the most powerful finish of the group this issue. It was actually hard to taste anything else immediately after because this was so intense in flavor—but never in a sloppy way. The fruit is always lifted and surprisingly fresh. This is probably not as rich or as deep as the 2003—or as attention-getting at first—but it has more elegance and freshness, plus the purity that allows it to compete well. Tasting them both over a few days, I changed my mind on occasion as to which I preferred. This was the initial winner, far more precocious, but the 2003 developed well, perhaps better, while this seemed a little compact by comparison. It was quite a horse race. Pick 'em based on your stylistic preferences.
Apart from the classics, we find many regional gems of different styles.
Late harvest wines are probably the easiest to understand. Grapes are picked so late that the sugars build up and residual sugar remains after the fermentation process. Ice wine, a style founded in Germany and there referred to as eiswein, is an extreme late harvest wine, produced from grapes frozen on the vine, and pressed while still frozen, resulting in a higher concentration of sugar. It is becoming a specialty of Canada as well, where it takes on the English name of ice wine.
Vin Santo, literally “holy wine,” is a Tuscan sweet wine made from drying the local white grapes Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia in the winery and not pressing until somewhere between November and March.
Rutherglen is an historic wine region in northeast Victoria, Australia, famous for its fortified Topaque and Muscat with complex tawny characteristics.
