2018 Ultreia El Rapolao
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Tasting notes
Vivid ruby. Intense red and blue fruit, floral oil and exotic spice qualities on the assertively perfumed nose. Juicy and precise, offering concentrated black raspberry, bitter cherry, boysenberry and lavender pastille flavors that take on a five-spice-powder accent with air. Deftly plays power off delicacy and finishes extremely long and silky, with polished tannins framing lingering blue fruit, spice and floral notes.
Critic scores
Luis Gutiérrez, Wine Advocate
Josh Raynolds
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The austere and sleek 2018 Ultreia El Rapolao could be the red equivalent to the white La del Vivo. Vinified with a short maceration, it fermented in chestnut barrel, where the wine's allowed to deliver a veil of flor yeast, and it matured in two used 500-liter barrels and a 225-liter barrique. The plot that produces this Rapolao delivers a more fragile wine. This has 12.6% alcohol and is the longer and more austere of the Rapolao bottlings. It is cleaner and longer, young and juicy. This was the origin of the first Rapolao that they bottled separately in 2011 in the La Vizcaína range. There is magic here. 1,500 bottles produced. It was bottled in October 2019.