About this WINE
Tempranillo/Tinto Fino
A high quality red wine grape that is grown all over Spain except in the hot South - it is known as Tinto Fino in Ribera del Duero, Cencibel in La Mancha and Valdepenas and Ull de Llebre in Catalonia. Its spiritual home is in Rioja and Navarra where it constitutes around 70% of most red blends.
Tempranillo-based wines tend to have a spicy, herbal, tobacco-like character accompanied by ripe strawberry and red cherry fruits. It produces fresh, vibrantly fruit driven "jovenes" meant for drinking young. However Tempranillo really comes into its own when oak aged, as with the top Riojas where its flavours seem to harmonise perfectly with both French and American oak, producing rich, powerful and concentrated wines which can be extraordinarily long-lived.
In Ribera del Duero it generally sees less oak - the exception being Vega Sicilia where it is blended with Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot and then aged for an astonishing 7 years in oak and is unquestionably one of the world`s greatest wines.
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Description
A superb New-Style Rioja from the vinous magician Alvaro Palacios. Vendimia means simply ‘vintage’ and has far more Garnacha than one may expect (50/50 Garnacha and Tempranillo), its provenance being the southern enclave of Rioja Baja. This cuvée is made by whole-bunch fermentation and then aged only briefly, that is to say for less than six months, in oak barrels.
If he believed in such things, Alvaro would describe it as a 'Joven'; the emphasis is certainly on exuberance, with soft hedge-row flavours, wild berries and gentle spice to the fore. With Mediterranean charm, and a certain come-hither, forward, approach to life, this is a distinctly superior every-day drinker and very friendly towards mid-week fare, or fine fare, in all likelihood, given its complexity.
Simon Field MW, Wine Buyer
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