2012 Penas Aladas Gran Reserva

The 2012 Peñas Aladas Gran Reserva is the second vintage to be bottled of the single-vineyard wine produced with the grapes from one of the oldest vineyards in the village of La Aguilera. In reality, the grapes come from different small plots in the zone known as Peñas Aladas, at 870 to 890 meters in altitude in one of the cooler zones of the village. The topsoil is rich in sand on clay and limestone bedrock. As in all the other old vineyards, the field blend is dominated by Tempranillo, but there is a percentage of other grapes that are all picked and fermented together with full clusters and indigenous yeasts. Fermentation and malolactic are never hurried up, and the same goes for the élevage, which in this case lasted some 51 months and was in mostly French oak barrels of different sizes and ages. There is a volatile twist with a hint of oak that reminds me of varnish. It has a touch of rustic elegance, with a completely different character from Peñas Aladas, which is unusually fine for Ribera del Duero. This wine should develop and age for a very long time in bottle, polishing some of the edges and developing more complexity and depth. Sometimes wines with a long aging in oak need even more time in bottle, and it's not crazy to say that this wine still feels a little too young... Only 927 bottles and 42 magnums were filled in January 2017.