Highly-rated Spanish wine-tasting
Watson's, Hong Kong
Tasted October 4, 2012 by DonalOB with 405 views
Introduction
Conducted by Victor Quinson and Jordi Carre.
Spain is number one in vineyard hectares (1.3M Ha) but number three in production. I think this implies good density and low yield but compared to what? Obviously, there are some great low-yield regions and huge areas of mass production. French winemakers were a big influence after they emigrated to Spain from regions like Bordeaux after the Phylloxera outbreak.
By the way, the net on the 'classic' bottle of Rioja was originally to stop theft of small amounts of wine, now just marketing.
1964 is supposedly the best Rioja year - hmmm, might be tricky!
Flight 1 (8 notes)
Lemon, brioche, slight burnt character, nutty. Fine mousse. Not great intensity.
Only 12% alcohol. Wonderful nose of butter and nuts, mandarin and peel, mineral, slight mushroom. Very smooth, medium acidity. Long. Like a sherry - 'on the edge'.
This is balanced and fresh, plenty of red-berry fruit and some earthiness to it. Medium+ body - quite glycerol and long. Quite open after 30 minutes - seemed little need to decant.
Rich fruit nose, blackberry and violet, with a lot of oak. Very dark and full bodied, quite intense (old vines). Alcohol on the finish (15.5%). Typical Carignan bitterness. Not my thing.
Huge diurnal temperatures in these vineyards: ~25 degrees Celsius.
Spice, pepper, bit oaky for me.
Very old vines - spends 16-18 months in new oak.
Thick, rich, almost Balsamic. Quite intense fruit. Needs a few years to allow the coarse tannins to drop out and get balance with the oak. Good finish.
Spicy blackberry nose, similar on palate but short and a bit flabby. Simple.