Events

97 points Wine Advocate
The 2023 Pico Ferreira comes from a lieu-dit in the village of Corullon, a northwest-facing, shady slope planted with centenary vines on slate soils. It fermented with 30% full clusters and indigenous yeasts in 1,000-liter vats with 21 days of maceration and matured in a 1,200-liter oak vat and 600-liter barrels for one year. This is a little more discrete and remained closed after being in the glass for a while, whereas the other wines opened up. It comes in at 12.98% alcohol, with a pH of 3.57 and 5.36 grams of acidity, with abundant, slightly dusty tannins. 1,980 bottles produced. It was bottled in January 2025.

Cesar Marquez Perez, Raul Perez's nephew, is one of the most precise winemakers in Bierzo with the family Castro Ventosa range and his personal project, which he started in 2015. In the 2023 vintage, he is releasing a new wine from the Villegas area, a lieu-dit in Valtuille on sandy soils. The single-vineyard wines are aging in increasingly larger oak containers, combining 1,200-liter vats with 500- and 600-liter barrels. He owns 7.2 hectares and works a further seven with local growers across Bierzo, from altitudes ranging between 450 to 850 meters above sea level. His production is slowly growing, and he now crafts 60,000 bottles per year.

As he told me while tasting the wines from the family winery, Castro Ventosa, which he also vinifies, "2023 was a cooler vintage with rain at the beginning of the harvest. The wines have a floral, serious and elegant profile with a contained alcohol content of 12.5% to 13%." These are some of the finest and more elegant wines he has produced so far.

Organic / Natural

Monastrell. Personality: Very brilliant ruby red with a purple rim boasting the youthfulness of the wine. Rich aromas of red forest fruits and whiffs of spices. The palate is well structured, powerful, and balanced with notes of black fruits, proudly showing its Mediterranean heritage.

The grapes are manually harvested, de-stemmed and crushed. Temperature controlled fermentation at 22-26°C in stainless steel tanks with continuous over-pumping to extract maximum intensity of color and aromas. This maceration-fermentation lasts for about 2-3 weeks. The wine is bottled after light (vegan-certified) fining and filtration, with a small addition of sulfur. 14% abv

Organic

Capitan Fanegas is the personal project of Mario Ruiz-Clavijo from the historic Bodegas Marques de Arviza in Rioja. The philosophy behind the Capitan Fanegas wines is to make single vineyard expressions of Rioja that reflect and express the sites they come from. The wines are vinos de author; unique representations that are true to the Rioja style.

La Unión comes from a single parcel in the La Unión village in Rioja that feautres a mixture of red and white clay with sandy soils. All grapes are hand-harvested from vines that average 25 years of age. A blend of 85% Tempranillo and 15% Graciano that is fermented with native yeasts in concrete tanks and aged for 12 months in barrel. Expressive aromas of blackberry, red currants and violets with a fine, silky palate and long, polished finish, enjoy this striking Rioja with grilled lamb chops.

Organic

92 points Wine Advocate
I love the simplicity of the red blend 2020 Candea Tinto, which is straightforward, tasty, juicy and balanced, without any excess or makeup, raw and authentic, with note of wild berries, flowers and herbs and a medium-bodied palate with moderate alcohol and nice balance. Highly drinkable. 14,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in September 2022

95 points Wine Advocate
The obsession in 2019 was to avoid excess ripeness and to keep the freshness, so they did a softer vinification, used larger vats for the elevage and used less American wood. The 2019 Valbuena was produced with a blend of Tinto Fino with 3% Merlot. It has 14.5% alcohol, a pH of 3.88 and 4.6 grams of acidity. I love the nose; it is perfumed and subtle. And the wine is beautifully textured; the tannins are very fine, silky even, quite different from the tannins from the other 2019s from the group that I tasted next to this, Macan and Pintia. A triumph over the conditions of the year, it's a more elegant Valbuena than I anticipated. 190,490 bottles, 5,581 magnums and some larger formats produced. It was bottled in June 2022

Organic / Natural Wine

65% Listan Prieto, with the rest of the wine being a blend Listan Blanco, Vijariego Negro, Verdello, Gual and Albillo Criollo from different vineyards, all vinified separately. The Listan Prieto is fermented whole cluster in open oak barrels, Verdello and Negramoll are direct pressed and fermented in oak barrel, and the Gual and Vijariego Negro are destemmed, fermented on the skins, also in oak. Aged for 8 months in used oak barrels. Unfined, unfiltered. Very light color, floral, with light tannins and texture. 350 bottles made.

Organic / Biodynamic

92-93 points Wine Advocate
The sample of the 2022 Pétalos has a fresh twist of watermelon, which is quite remarkable, as the summer torrid and very dry and they expected much riper wines. Some 25% of the grapes used here are from owned vineyards in the village of Corullón and 80% purchased grapes. They used more white grapes this year, more than any other year, to give the wines freshness. The result is much better than expected; there's not much acidity, but using so many different plots allows more room to play with the blend, which is something they can only do here and in Corullón. It's perfumed and quite harmonious, balanced and fresher than expected. They expect to fill some 290,000 bottles. This is the 20th anniversary of Pétalos and the 25th anniversary of the winery

100% Single Vineyard Tempranillo; 21 months in barrel & 24 months in bottle

"Very deep colour; clean and bright. Intense cherry and purple glints. Very complex and elegant nose, red and black ripe fruits (cherry, mulberry) between complex tertiary aging aromas like liquorice, coffee, vanilla, roasted, leather and tobacco, with a characteristic mineral touch. Very elegant and velvety. With the same aromas founded in nose, complex. Ripe fruit, coffee, liquorice, leather, wood and roasted." Winemaker Notes

What: Pedro Ximenez

Where: Sherry, Spain

Why: Because for the money this is one of the most intense PX’s we’ve ever tasted. Why? Lets start with honeyed raisins, oranges and almonds. Then there’s chocolate and coffee and figs. But that’s just the sugar talking. After those candied notes hit you they give way to salt, herbs, coffee grounds, tar and licorice. The flavor show does not stop... ever.

Organic / Biodynamic

Garnacha with some 10% Tempranillo that fermented with indigenous yeasts and matured in 500-liter barrels and tinaja. It has a slightly deeper color than the pure Garnacha bottlings and a fruit-driven nose with aromas of berries, flowers and herbs. It has a medium-bodied palate with fine tannins and is balanced, easy to drink and very pleasant.

Organic

Capitan Fanegas is the personal project of Mario Ruiz-Clavijo from the historic Bodegas Marques de Arviza in Rioja. The philosophy behind the Capitan Fanegas wines is to make single vineyard expressions of Rioja that reflect and express the sites they come from. The wines are vinos de author; unique representations that are true to the Rioja style.

A blend of 70% Viura, 20% Malvasia and 10% Garnacha Blanca from two estate vineyards located at an elevation of 650 meters in La Unión: La Muela (old bush vines planted in 1964 on calcareous clay soil), and El Paleton (bush vines planted in 1997 on red clay soils with lot of pebbles).

Fermented in stainless steel tanks and aged in oak barrels for 6 months, followed by 4 months in concrete, resulting in layers of fresh and rich flavors.

Aromas of wild flowers, tropical fruits, and honeysuckle, with flavors of lemony apple, savory herbs and discrete oak spice. Pair with grilled tuna, lobster, and watching butterflies.

95 points Wine Advocate
2020 was drier than average until the harvest, when it rained and diluted the grapes, and they had to wait to regain concentration. The result is that the 2020 Alion is a wine with better balance and freshness. They felt the skins were very ripe and they could extract more and use a little more American oak (4%) in the elevage. From 2019, they kept the press wine separate until June, and they keep separate quantities of press wines that are aged in different containers depending on the quality of the wine. They used a percentage of concrete and oak vats for the elevage, which gives the wine more verticality and freshness. It's a subtle and elegant Alion, not as dense as some other vintages, but with nice balance and very elegant tannins Drinking Window: 2025 - 2035

This layered sweet wine displays a deep, glossy brown color and is truly indulgent. The nose features raisin, pumpkin pie spice, tobacco leaf and pure sugar cane notes. The palate is rich, expansive and beautifully balanced with honeyed, almost milk chocolatey raisin and smoke flavors. It is a very long and elegant PX and finishes with expressive coffee, tea leaf and buttered popcorn tones. Fantastic with blue cheese, toasted nuts, dried fruit, poured over vanilla ice cream or for something truly decadent, pair it with chocolate glazed doughnuts, sticky buns or Paris-Brest pastry. - PJ

Oxidative aging. Criaderas and solera system for a period of 4-6 years in oak barrels .

Organic / Biodynamic

The oak is very integrated and neatly folded into the fruit. A nicely balanced wine which is very fruit driven with chalky fine-grained tannins. The palate is medium to full-bodied with notes of ripe berries and herbs with a spicy twist.

Organic

90% Tempranillo and 10% Graciano sourced from Sotes, Cenicero, Huércanos and Oyón in Rioja. Aged for 12 months in French and American oak barrels, this garnet-hued wine presents aromas of wild herbs and black fruit, complemented by oak layers. On the palate, it is dry, rich and fairly taut with a lingering juicy profile, offering notes of black fruit and a clingy texture.

Organic / Biodynamic

91+ points Wine Advocate
The 2022 Lagrimas de Bhilar Graciano managed to keep the moderate alcohol and freshness in a warm year like 2022. It was produced with grapes from younger vineyards, fermented in concrete and matured in 8,000-liter oak vat. It's aromatic, herbal, spicy and minty, very showy, juicy and with a soft mouthfeel. Delicious and easy to drink. 10,500 bottles produced. It was bottled in December 2023.

94 points Wine Advocate
I tasted two vintages of the Gran Reserva from Haro, starting with the 2017 Imperial Gran Reserva from a warm and dry year whose yields were lowered by frost in late April and was saved by rains at the end of July. It's 85% Tempranillo, 10% Graciano and 5% Mazuelo with 14% alcohol, a pH of 3.65 and 5.31 grams of acidity. It fermented in small oak vats followed by malolactic in concrete and aging in French (70%) and American oak barrels for two years, during which time the wine was racked every eight months. It's evolving at a slightly faster pace and maybe it's a little lighter, but I didn't feel the heat, which is quite something. It's drinking well. 75,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in July 2020.

94 points Vinous
The 2017 Gran Reserva Imperial blends 85% Tempranillo, 10% Graciano and 5% Mazuelo from Villalba in Rioja Alta. Aged for 24 months in oak barrels (two-thirds French, one-third American), it's a dark garnet red. The 2017 reveals alluring aromas of sour cherry, blackberry and hints of mint, all set against an oak backdrop. Dry and concentrated, it finishes powerfully, achieving significant nuance for a ripe year in Rioja.

Organic

92 points Wine Advocate
I also tasted the 2022 Vi??edos en Labastida. The wines are produced in a similar way to highlight the differences of the places and vintages. In 2022, it's a similar blend of different plots with some 85% Tempranillo, 10% Garnacha and 5% white grapes, and it had a similar vinification and ??levage in 500- and 600-liter oak foudres in their cave. It's very primary and fruit-driven, with a nose of ripe berries and herbs, a lactic twist and a fine thread in the palate, with surprisingly fine tannins for a 2022. 3,600 bottles were filled in September 2023.

These are some of the most exciting new Riojas in the market.
Before modern or traditional Rioja, there was a simpler style of whole-cluster, co-fermented, and shortly-aged wines that were as naked and honest an expression of Rioja as one could find. So it's no surprise that Jos?? Gil followed in his ancestors' footsteps with focus in the vineyard rather than the cellar - which happens to be a cave in the outskirts of San Vicente.

Jose currently farms 5 hectares of vines located in the villages of San Vicente, Labastida, and Briones. Practices are manual and organic although he is not certified. The vines range in age from 5 to 130 years old with the majority Tempranillo, a small percentage of Viura. The oldest vineyard plots are co-planted with tiny percentages of other grape varieties which include Garnacha and Palomino. When the grapes reach the cellar after being harvested by hand, they are fermented either whole-cluster, or partially destemmed. All fermentations are by indigenous yeasts and extraction is gentle. After pressing the wines are racked into 225-300L French oak barrels and transported to the aging cellar in San Vicente.

94 points Wine Advocate
The 2018 Macan has moderate alcohol (14%) and more freshness (pH 3.69), reflecting a cooler and rainier year that forced them to fine-tune the sorting and selection of the grapes, which fermented with selected yeasts. The elevage was in barrel (55%) and larger foudres for 16 months. 2018 was quite different from 2019, as it was cooler and rainier. The wine is serious and harmonious, which was a challenge, and winemaker Gonzalo Iturriaga told me that they had to be very careful and sort and select the grapes. It's textured and elegant, a style that follows the path of the 2016; it's elegant but with depth, managing the elevage in foudre better, which was a learning process they started in 2016. 74,570 bottles, 2557 magnums and some larger formats produced. It was bottled in September 2020.

96 pts Wine Advocate
The 2012 Único is released 10 years after the harvest. They produced it with the grapes from 40 of the 210 hectares of vineyards they have, with a total of 55 separate plots and 19 different soils. It's mostly 95% Tinto Fino (Tempranillo) and 5% Cabernet Sauvignon grapes that are cooled down for 24 hours and then fermented in oak vats with indigenous yeasts. Malolactic fermentation was in stainless steel and the aging in 225-liter oak barrels and 20,000-liter oak vats for a long time as this was bottled in June 2018. 2012 is a concentrated year, warm and dry with some rain at the end of September that helped the end of the ripening process of healthy grapes with lots of color and ripe tannins. The wine has a ripe nose, with intoxicating notes of black fruit, fresh meat and blood, a spicy touch from the American oak and an earthy twist. It's a voluptuous and decadent vintage for Vega Sicilia, for those that favor years like 2006, a bit atypical, or 1999.

97 points James Suckling
Berry, smoke, violet and sandalwood aromas follow through to a full, layered palate that shows super polished tannins that are caressing and long. It’s tight and very long. Give it two or three years to soften. Drink after 2023.

Premium brandy aged in the traditional solera system of Spain using sherry-soaked barrels. A gently spiced nose leads to a warm body with a distinct smoothness. Well balanced flavor profile makes this brandy perfect when served straight.

"1978 was a very short vintage for Rioja with "only" 78 million liters of wine produced (compared with 135 million in 1981 or 128 million in 1973). That year Egypt and Israel signed the Camp David Accords, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and in Italy the terrorist group Red Brigades kidnapped and killed ex-Prime Minister Aldo Moro. The Vatican saw Pope John Paul I succeeding Pope Paul IV and Pope John Paul II succeeding Pope John Paul I shortly after. ?????Grease????? opened in cinemas and cult TV series ?????Mazinger Z????? aired in Spain, surely the first (and probably the last!) super robot manga series that I watched on TV. The vintage was officially declared "Muy Buena" (very good), while at CVNE they were a little more conservative about the quality of their wines and considered it simply "Buena." The 1978 Vi??a Real Gran Reserva was bottled unusually late, in February 1987. That might explain why I found the wine exceptionally dry, with smoky notes." WA

I think context is very important in wine, and when I drink old bottles I always think how the world was when they harvested the grapes: what happened that year, how people lived and how they made the wine. It's sometimes mind boggling to drink some very old wines, a real privilege which, I often say, is as close as you can get to time travel. So I've given some context to all these wines. I'm told nobody reads the tasting notes and people only look at the scores, let's see if we get some reaction on these. Even though the tasting was excellent, I expected even more; we had too many corked wines and some vintages had shown better on other occasions. But such is the case with old wines, there are no great vintages anymore, only great bottles. Highlights of the tasting were 1959, 1947 and 1938. On top of those, there was one outstanding and perfect wine that day, and, as I might not find better excuse to publish a note on it than now, I've included it here. It's an historical wine, a one-off, semi-sweet white produced at the end of the Spanish Civil War, a wine impossible to replicate, fruit of impossible circumstances, a wine I've had the luck to drink and share with many people on a number of occasions and which never fails to impress everyone.

Organic

94+ points Wine Advocate
The 2023 Kinki has to be the most perfumed, floral and elegant vintage for this bottling; it's a grownup wine, not a teenager anymore. It has very juicy fruit and is really elegant and balanced, more serious but drinkable. It was produced with the grapes from a vineyard that has up to 25% other grapes, not only Mencía but Doña Blanca, Palomino, Godello, Alicante Bouschet (more than usual, which provides freshness) and Estaladiña. It fermented with full clusters, all the varieties together, in and open 5,000-liter oak vat. It comes in at 12.7% alcohol with a pH of 3.4, aiming at contained ripeness, low extraction and high drinkability. The ripeness is more complete and more homogeneous this year in the zone of Cobrana, and the wines are more serious, with a core of bright red fruit, fresh and elegant. It's always bottled early, before the summer, and was bottled in May 2024. 4,378 bottles produced. Drink:2025-2032.

Organic / Biodynamic

94 points Vinous
The 2022 Garnacha Navaherreros hails from Gredos, a subzone of San Martín de Valdeiglesias. It delivers pure ripe guinda with gentle herbal notes, pomegranate, grenadine and a background of cinnamon. This light-bodied red is delicate and enticing with tannic grip and a touch of ripeness. Richness meets whole-bunch tannins to create a compact palate.

96+ points Wine Advocate
The nose of the 2023 A Cesteira transported me to the Albariños from yesteryear, fragrant and developed, open, expressive and nuanced, mixing notions of freshly cut grass with flowers, yellow fruit and pollen. It's Albariño from a single plot on schist and clay soils from vines averaging 45 years of age, fermented in stainless steel and matured in 2,500-liter oak foudre for 10 months. It has fine granularity, an incredible texture, sleek and polished, smooth and elegant. All the whites show contained ripeness and around 13% alcohol, like this one, which has a pH of 3.36 and 7.7 grams of acidity. 4,600 bottles produced. It was bottled in August 2024

100% Albariño • sourced from a 0.7-hectare parcel in Villalonga on decomposed schist, 60 years of age on average. The parcel originally belonged to a family of cesteiros, or basket-weavers • whole-cluster pressed and fermented spontaneously • no malolactic • raised for 11 months on the lees in neutral 2500L French-oak foudres • 400 cases produced

Organic / Natural / No Added Sulphur

La Lambretta 2022 is Gemma Mir??'s new wine, a unique expression of grape-ripened Muscat from Priorat. Sourced from 40-year-old vineyards at the Les Pinyanes estate, this wine is a tribute to Gemma's family memories, with subtle notes of citrus and Mediterranean aromas. Unfined, Unfiltered. 10% abv

91 points James Suckling
Briny nose with hot stones, seaweed, white almonds and ahint of bruised crab apples. Pretty flavorful on the palate with a full body where you will find tangy flavors. Bone-dry and mouthwatering finsh with a briny, saline tang. Delicious now.

100% Pedro Xim??nez. Old bush-trained vines, farmed completely sustainably without organic certificaiton, but avoiding all use of harmful fungicides, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, and irrigation.

3 Miradas Vino de Pueblo is a village wine sourced from five grand cru sites in the Sierra de Montilla de Calidad Superior. Bunches are destemmed and the pressed in a horizontal pneumatic press. The must ferments spontaneously in tinajas, traditional concrete amphora (4,800L).

Alvear is the oldest family-owned winery in Spain, and the oldest winery in Andaluc??a, making it the original producer of sherry-style wines (vinos generosos) in Andaluc??a. Alvear launched the 3 Miradas project in 2016 to express the terroir of Montilla-Moriles without the interference of the ageing-intensive process used to produce the classic wines of Montilla. They use a selection of their top "grand cru" vineyards from the Sierra de Montilla de Calidad Superior to make five single vineyard wines and one Vino de Pueblo, a blend of the five sites fermented and aged in tinaja with a short period of aging under velo de flor.

Organic

94 points Wine Advocate
As with La Canoca, the 2022 El Bardallo changes from a single-vineyard to a paraje (lieu-dit) wine and includes more plots in the same place to increase the volume of wine produced. It's Tempranillo with some 10% white grapes, mostly Viura. It fermented with some whole-cluster fruit and indigenous yeasts and matured in 500- and 600-liter barrels. It's quite fruit-driven, aromatic and reminiscent of the old carbonic-fermentation reds matured in barrel, juicy and velvety, with abundant, chalky tannins and a dry finish. 3,200 bottles were filled in September 2023.

Jose currently farms 5 hectares of vines located in the villages of San Vicente, Labastida, and Briones. Practices are manual and organic although he is not certified. The vines range in age from 5 to 130 years old with the majority Tempranillo, a small percentage of Viura. The oldest vineyard plots are co-planted with tiny percentages of other grape varieties which include Garnacha and Palomino. When the grapes reach the cellar after being harvested by hand, they are fermented either whole-cluster, or partially destemmed. All fermentations are by indigenous yeasts and extraction is gentle. After pressing the wines are racked into 225-300L French oak barrels and transported to the aging cellar in San Vicente.