Telmo Rodriguez, YJAR, Rioja 2020

Focused crystalline raspberry and cranberry fruit character, savoury, plenty of white pepper and fennel spice, intense, powerful, balanced, nuanced and gripping with a drawn out finish, providing more evidence of this compelling wine. 3.8ha of grapes, field blend. Native yeast fermentation, small size open top wooden vats, goblet trained high altitude vineyard, co-planted with massal selection. Foothills of Sierra de Tolono, 600-800m altitude. A challenging vintage that saw early rain and hail followed by a hot and dry summer, required intuition and rapid response - the kind of growing season that great winemakers rise to meet, as Telmo Rodriguez and Pablo Eguzkiza have done here. Harvest September 30 to October 7.

The nose of the 2020 Yjar developed very floral notes with time in the glass, making it very aromatic, expressive and elegant. This is completely different from the other two reds, as this comes from a specific plot. It reveals the finesse of the marl soils and the austerity of the stones. It was a year of sorting and discarding (they had hail) to achieve the consistency they look for in this wine. The different varieties co-planted in the vineyard fermented together (there's more Garnacha here) in open-top oak vats with indigenous yeasts. The wine matured in foudres and barrels of different sizes for approximately 30 months. It's elegant and clean, with a seamless palate, very fine tannins and a vibrant mouthfeel. 12,656 bottles produced. It was bottled in May 2023.