2019 Quiñón de Valmira, Álvaro Palacios, Rioja, Spain
- Red
- Dry
- Medium Bodied
- Grenache
- Ferran Centelles
- 19/20
- James Suckling
- 95/100
- Luis Gutiérrez
- 98/100
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Critics reviews
90% Garnacha, 10% others. A single plot at 616 m above sea level named Quiñón de Valmira is located in Monte Yerga. Organic viticulture. Alcoholic fermentation in oak vats. Aged in barrels and foudres for 16 months. Neither fined nor filtered.
Tasted blind. An aerial texture. A super-Burgundian style and with great purity. Álvaro, are you sure that the forest hasn't fallen inside your barrels? This wine could not smell more delicately of a forest mount, rich in scrubland and with touches of graphite. Herbal, Mediterranean, thyme, rosemary and moss. Very fine. How can it be that a wine with such delicate texture fills my palate with so much flavour! An exciting wine, for sure.
Drink 2021 - 2030
Plenty of sweet berries, such as strawberries and plums with some citrus. Full-bodied with round tannins and a fresh finish. Layered and intense, but there’s lovely purity of fruit and a delicious, juicy finish. So attractive now, but better in two or three years.
It was bottled in April 2021, and 3,914 bottles, 110 magnums and 22 double magnums were produced.
The single-vineyard 2019 Quiñón de Valmira is made with Garnacha and 10% other traditional varieties) grown at 616 meters in altitude, fermented with some full clusters with indigenous yeasts in oak vats and matured in oak foudres and bocoyes for 16 months. This is 'only' 13.5% alcohol lowish for Garnacha), so I asked Palacios how this wine can be so low in alcohol in such a warm and dry year. He explained to me that the red soils are only 20 centimeters deep, and below that, it's all white.
Those calcium carbonate soils are cold soils, and the wines are also pale and low in alcohol but with fully developed flavours and aromas. The wines come through as lively, vibrant and deep, with pungent flavors, incredible finesse, with the red fruit from Garnacha intermixed with limestone that gives it the incredible elegance and tastiness, with an almost salty finish. This has more fruit than flowers, different from the 2018 but at the same quality level.
Drink 2021 - 2030