Dominio del Aguila Picaro Ribera del Duero Clarete 2020

Organic

95 points Wine Advocate
Jorge Monzon considers 2020 to be an almost prefect vintage, cool and fresh, reminiscent of the great 2016. The pink 2020 Picaro del Aguila Clarete was produced with 35% Tempranillo, 35% Albillo Mayor and the rest other local grape varieties (Garnacha, Bobal, Brunal, Monastrell, Tempranillo Gris, other Albillos, Garnacha Blanca, Pirules, Jaen, Moscatel, Malvasias...) found in the old vineyards. This is very different from your average rose, more like a serious light red or powerful white that slowly fermented during 11 months and matured in barrel for 18 months. The orange-ish/pink wine is still young and lively, with some notes of toasted sesame seeds and a faint flinty reduction a little a la Coche-Dury, reminiscent of some vintages of their superb white. This was bottled without being racked, and perhaps that's why it has this nice reduction and could be the finest vintage to date. It has a strong chalky aftertaste from the limestone-rich soils, which makes it a terroir white, but it's also very marked by the style (which they updated from the traditional wines in Aranda in the old times) of a unique wine. It's balanced and mellow but not a shy wine, with 14% alcohol and a pH of 3.26. I've tasted 15+-year-old bottles of wines of this style, and they were still lively, so this one should not be shorter lived. Unique. Given my experience with past vintages, I'd wait a little before pulling the cork here. 8,358 bottles and 151 magnums produced. It was bottled in February 2022.

"Their flagship "clarete" is produced with a blend of white and red grapes (35% Tempranillo, 35% Albillo and the rest of mixed varieties). They recovered this ancestral style of wine in the zone of Aranda de Duero, produced with grapes from very old organically farmed vineyards where there are a lot of varieties mixed in the field (Garnacha, Bobal, Bruñal, Monastrell, Tempranillo Gris, other Albillos, Garnacha Blanca, Pirulés, Jaén, Moscatel, Malvasías...), and they all fermented together with Tempranillo and the white Albillo to create what they describe as "a wine that is not a rosé and has aromas of white and the spirit of a red." The clusters are pressed directly and the must settles in concrete in their ancient caves, then it ferments slowly (over eight to nine months) in oak barrels, where the wine matured for a total of 17 months. This is a wine that ages magnificently in bottle, and together with the rosé from López de Heredia (that technically is also a "clarete"), these are the two most characterful and best pink wines produced in Spain today." - Wine Advocate