Arrocal "Seleccion Especial" Ribera del Duero Red 2021

Alcohol: 14,5%

Grape(s): Tempranillo

Localization: Ribeira Del Duero, Spain

Tasting Notes: The 2018 Selección bottling from Arrocal was aged entirely in French oak casks for eighteen months, with half the casks new and the other half “one wine barrels”. It comes in at 14.5 percent in this vintage and offers up a ripe and elegant bouquet of red plums, black cherries, cigar wrapper, beautiful spice tones, cocoa powder, a good base of almost salty soil tones and a quite refined framing of nutty new oak. On the palate, the wine is deep, full-bodied, and beautifully balanced, with a very good core, ripe, fine-grained tannins and lovely focus and grip on the long and nascently complex finish.

The Domain: Located in Gumiel de Mercado a small village in the western portion of the Ribera del Duero D.O., the winery produced its first wine in 2001. The vineyards were planted by the owners and a new winery was built and utilized for the 2005 vintage. The young estate vines are trained espalier in a Smart system and are drip irrigated. With the completion of the new winery, all movement of wine through the winery takes place by gravity to minimize rough handling and to help obtain a wine with a silky mouthfeel. Fruit expression is maximized through temperature-controlled fermentation, excluding extended maceration and gentle pressing in low capacity basket presses. The young wine typically ages for 4 months in oak while the Seleccion will spend 15 months in oak.