2009 Torre de Barreda, Vino de la Tierra de Castilla, Juan de la Barreda
About this WINE
Bodegas Juan de la Barreda
Every so often a wine buyer has a double-take when he or she tastes a wine from an unpromising area, from a producer he has never heard of, his expectations low, his interest, frankly somewhat modest, and then, bang, it immediately becomes clear that he is in the presence of something a little bit special. These moments are, alas, relatively rare, therefore all the more cherished when they occur. Our intrepid Spanish buyer certainly did not have great expectations from the quixotic bad lands of the Central Meseta, but he was wrong!
Located an hour or so to the South East of Madrid, Torre de Barreda is situated on the hot flat and in all honesty somewhat unpromising planes of Castille. Father and son, both rather confusingly called Juan de la Barreda, have however fashioned a wonderful wine, from old vine Tempranillo, known as Cencibel down here.
The grapes are grown traditionally ‘en vasco’ then vinified even more traditionally in ‘tinaja’ epoxy resin-lined terracotta vessels. The result has, unsurprisingly, bags of personality and individuality, but rather more surprisingly elegance and a rather sophisticated structure.
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
Located an hour or so to the South East of Madrid, Torre de Barreda is situated on the hot flat and in all honesty somewhat unpromising planes of Castille. Father and son, both rather confusingly called Juan de la Barreda, have fashioned a wonderful wine from old vine Tempranillo, known as Cencibel down here.
The grapes are grown traditionally ‘en vasco’ then vinified even more traditionally in ‘tinaja’ epoxy resin-lined terracotta vessels. The result has, unsurprisingly, bags of personality and individuality, but equally surprisingly elegance and a rather sophisticated structure. The 2009 boasts fruit of a ripe but not raisined nature, acidity of a natural and not artificial (that is to say added) disposition and warmth which does not threaten to become intemperate.
(Simon Field MW, BBR Wine Buyer)
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