2017 Arbossar
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Tasting notes
Based on 100% Carignan brought up all in concrete, the 2017 Arbossar offers a vivid ruby hue as well as promising notes of black fruits, peppery herbs, violets, and new leather. Full-bodied, smoky, rich, and concentrated, with bright acidity, it’s needs short-term bottle age and should evolve for a decade.
Critic scores
Average Score
Jancis Robinson MW
Jeb Dunnuck
More reviews and scores
Brilliant ruby. Intensely perfumed, mineral-driven cherry and boysenberry scents show excellent clarity and pick up exotic spice and potpourri nuances with air. Shows very good energy and powerful thrust on the palate, offering concentrated and appealingly sweet red and blue fruit, floral pastille and spicecake flavors that deepen with air. Closes with strong tenacity, gentle tannic grip and resonating floral and spice notes. Sourced from 90-plus-year-old vines, all whole clusters and raised in concrete.
As I hadn't tasted the wines from Priorat since August 2019, I had two vintages of some wines to taste side by side, and that was the case with the pure Cariñena 2017 Arbossar, which I tasted together with the 2018. It's from a vineyard planted in 1910 on a north-facing slope at 400 meters in altitude on classical llicorella slate and granite soils in the village of Torroja del Priorat that is worked biodynamically and is in the process of being certified organic. This is the first vintage to be fermented and matured exclusively in concrete, trying to achieve the soil and climate of the year more faithfully. The wine surprised me with its orange color and its very open nose, showing notes of brick dust and aromatic herbs. The palate has developed flavors and is tasty, with some grainy tannins. It seems like this vintage is now fully ripe and developed. 5,200 bottles produced. It was bottled in March 2019.
Smooth but still pretty sweet with cocoa flavours. (JR)
About the producer
Created by Dominik Huber and Eben Sadie in 2001, Terroir al Limit works with old vines and minimal intervention to make a fresher style of Priorat. Now made exclusively by Dominik Huber, its top wines are the single-site Cariñena Les Tosses and Garnacha Les Manyes.