2013 Las Iruelas

Garnacha. 70-year-old single vineyard planted on slate and red clay soils. 1,000 m elevation and extremely limited yields of 15 hl/ha. Whole cluster and very long maceration of 60 days. The wine is aged in 500-litre barrels for 12 months. Not clarified or filtered. The wine has a developed light garnet colour. The nose is very open and shows lots of different aromas such as ripe red fruits, floral, herbaceous notes and herbal character. The wine is light but flavourful, very polished and soft textured. It has a burgundian style, completely looking towards elegance. (FC)

The second vintage of this telluric wine, the 2013 Las Iruelas, is even better than the debut. This has a very shallow but complex soil, mixing granite, schist, quartz, red clay and decomposed rocks that allow the roots to go deep and produce delicate, fragrant wines with lots of dry flowers, something earthy, almost organic, but all of it in a very subtle, subdued way. It's a wine that you need to pull as it sits shy in the glass and is not exuberant as El Reventón might be. There is some muskiness, perhaps spices over the dried flowers, and the nose seems to change by the minute. If the nose is different, the palate feels weightless; it dances on your tongue like a ballet dancer but it also has the muscle, inner power and grip that makes it stronger than it seems. It has the balance and stuffing to age in bottle. This wine achieves something that is very difficult -- to be powerful but look light. This vineyard is located at some 1,000 meters altitude and one hectare of vines only yielded some 1,100 kilos of grapes, so only 600 bottles were produced. Since 2015 he has a further half-hectare here.