Dominio Aguila, Ribera del Duero, Penas Aladas Gran Reserva 2013

Their Gran Reserva is released a good six or seven years after the harvest, and they consider the 2013 Peñas Aladas Gran Reserva still too young. It comes from small plots of some of the oldest vineyards in the village of La Aguilera, in the zone known as Peñas Aladas in a cooler place at 870 to 890 meters in altitude. The topsoils are sandy, and then there is clay and a limestone-and-marl mother rock that they consider perfect. The dominant grape is Tempranillo, but in these old plots, there is always a mix of varieties—Albillo, Bruñal, Garnacha, Bobal, Cariñena—and the aim is to ferment them all together (ripeness permitting). This fermented with full clusters that were foot trodden, and malolactic was in barrel and extremely slow (19 months). It matured in barrel for five years. It is an incredibly backward wine, young and undeveloped, with tons of gunpowder, earthy and mineral, diesel-like, complex and with a magnetic attraction that makes you go back over and over again. It has pungent and pristine flavors, with amazing precision and symmetry, like laser cut, long, with very fine tannins and a supple, almost salty finish. This wine should age forever in bottle. This wine is just magic. 1,671 bottles and 69 magnums were filled in September 2018. The initial 2010 is now glorious, but I agree, still young...

Lurid ruby-red. Intensely perfumed aromas of raspberry liqueur, exotic spices and potpourri, joined by a hint of smoky minerals as the wine opens up. Densely packed, lithe and alluringly sweet, showing impressive depth and sharp delineation to the sappy red berry, spicecake and floral pastille flavors, which show absolutely no rough edges. Gains power with air and finishes extremely long and alluringly sweet, with harmonious tannins that build slowly on a strikingly persistent, floral- and mineral-driven finish. From a single vineyard that is more than 100 years old; made with whole clusters, fermented in a concrete tank and aged for five years in French oak barrels.