Critics reviews
Neal Martin - 25/04/2013
About this WINE
Bodegas Pintia
Vega Sicilia’s owners, the Álvarez family, bought Bodegas Pintia in 1996, attracted to the galet-strewn terroir in the northern Spanish region of Toro, the rich clay subsoils and the familiar altitude. They decided to produce an alternative expression of Vega Sicilia’s style of Tinto Fino (Tempranillo) from this site.
Toro’s main point of difference to Ribera del Duero is the ambient temperature, which can blaze in the height of summer. The challenge here is to match concentration with elegance, a challenge met by Bodegas Pintia with no shortage of aplomb.
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
Approaching the wines chronologically, the debut 2001 Pintia has a pretty bouquet with raspberry and wild strawberry aromas up front, followed by secondary scents of fennel and Provencal herbs underneath. The palate is medium-bodied with a spicy opening. The tannins remain quite firm and are just a little disconnected with the degraded fruit, while the finish is beginning to exhibit some oxidation. The palate has not aged quite as well as the aromatics, so I would drink up in the next couple of years. Interestingly, the production of the 2001 was just over 80,000 bottles compared to almost quarter of a million nowadays.
Neal Martin - 25/04/2013
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