2012 Termanthia
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Tasting notes
A very hot, dry vintage with less than 200 mm of rain through the year. Yield of 1,300 kg/ha. Ungrafted vines over 120 years old. 100% destemmed, extended maceration post-fermentation for 24 days. Aged for six months in new French barrels before a further 16 months in a second new barrel. Malolactic in 100% new French barrels before ageing 20 months in new French barriques. Bottled July 2014. Although 2012 was a hot vintage, there is plenty of fragrance and freshness on the nose. Still youthful, violet notes with a coolness on the palate and fine-grained tannins which balance the intense concentration of fruit. The oak is subtle and just evident in the background. A standout wine. (AWH)
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Average Score
Jancis Robinson MW
Tamlyn Currin, jancisrobinson.com
More reviews and scores
Full bottle 1,949 g. 100% Tinta de Toro. Made from a handful of tiny parcels of vines well over 100 years old (average age 120 years old). 200% new French oak. 2012 was a cooler year with higher rainfall than usual. The wine smells of lavender, pink peppercorns, slivovitz. Cedar fragrant and cigar spicy on the palate, notes of pine needles and bay leaf interspersed with nutmeg and coconut, and it's only as I spend time sifting through the settling dust-fine motes of spice and herbs that I find the broad swathe of ravishingly rich, sepia-tinged, time-mellowed fruit underneath. Black fruit has melted into the softly-simmered garnet of cooked plums. The glittery-hot edge of tar has melded, turned nutmeg, black cardamom. There's a Christmas-pudding sweet-spice excitement. The tannins hold firm, muscled, supple, tasting of honeybush tea leaves and Sichuan pepper, but their strength is not knuckling against the gently ageing fruit but curving a protective space for it. A wine that is owning its trajectory of time. (TC)
Opaque ruby. A deeply perfumed bouquet evokes ripe dark fruit, violet, licorice, pipe tobacco and smoky vanillin oak, and a zesty mineral flourish adds energetic lift. Sweet and seamless on the palate, offering powerful black currant, cherry-vanilla and floral pastille flavors that become livelier as the wine stretches out. Rich yet surprisingly graceful, showing zero excess fat and no rough edges on a strikingly long, sappy finish, where building tannins add framework and grip.
100% Tinta de Toro from Argujillo municipality at 800 m elevation. Very old vines dating back to 1870 and 1890, planted on sandy soils. Fermentation took place in French oak tronconic tanks of 10 hl and 20 hl. Foot-treading twice a day over 10 days followed by cold pre-fermentation for 5 days. Long maceration with the skins prior to six months' ageing in new French oak barrels, and then the wine is transferred again into new barrels for 16 months. Racking is done every four months. Tasted blind. The wine has massive concentration and extract. It is extremely deep and ripe with tones of ripe black fruit, intense new French oak, pencil lead and sweet spices. It has an extra dose of concentration and muscle compared with the rest of wines from Toro. It still keeps elegance despite its massive palate. Glorious wine full of high-quality, juicy and fleshy tannins. It is a fantastic wine that has almost everything. (FC)