Offre Wine in Black 'Trésors espagnols'

Wine Enthusiast

This dark-garnet-colored wine offers a bouquet of black currant, anisette and sage. Blackberry, cassis, dark-chocolate, violet and clove flavors are joined by a note of marjoram. Tannins start out feather light, slowly fill the palate, and linger for a while.

James Suckling

Dusty blackberries with some blue fruit, stones and spices. Nicely chewy and tight on the full-bodied palate, loaded with fine-grained tannins and juicy, almost tart fruit.

Decanter

Our Best in Show journey across Northern Spain continues with a 2020 Bierzo, grown just across the provincial border from Galicia into Castilla y Léon. It’s another zone of steep slopes and old vines – the variety in this case being Mencia (known as Jaen in Portugal’s Dão region). This wine is deep black-red in colour and vivacious and urgent in aroma: wild plums mingled with the woodland scents of leaf, copse and forest floor. The palate is fruit-packed and vibrant, vigorous with an energy derived both from ripe acidity and fresh though smooth tannins; look out, too, for a stony, bitter-edged finish perhaps derived from the region’s slate soils. Wonderful drinking now in the flush of youth, but fruit of this quality will hold well for a few years yet.

Decanter World Wine Awards

Tim Atkin

Always a good value Crianza, this is a cuvée of Tempranillo and 10% Mazuelo and Graciano from a range of vineyards in the Rioja Alta sub-region. Marked by its 80% American oak, it has appealing aromas of sweet spices and desiccated coconut, vibrant acidity and layers of bramble and black cherry.

Mundus Vini

Robert Parker

Their youngest red is the 2022 La Vadina, from a very warm and dry summer when they have managed to keep the freshness in the wines—this has a pH of 3.3. The wine has moderate ripeness and alcohol (13.8%, almost 1% lower than the previous year); they harvested looking at acidity rather than ripeness, and they had to sort and select because in the same bunch they had both green and overripe grapes. So, it was a year that required precision and work. This pure unoaked Garnacha comes from 100% purchased grapes from different soils, vine ages and altitudes, all in the village of Almonacid de la Sierra; the grapes were harvested earlier and fermented destemmed in stainless steel with indigenous yeasts and matured in concrete for five months. It's primary and fruit-driven, with a floral note and less ripeness than previous vintages despite the natural conditions of the year (it feels like a cool vintage!). It's juicy, primary and fresh, with cleanliness and balance. A bargain.