1996 Abadía Retuerta El Campanario
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Tasting notes
Also from their initial vintage and released as part of the historical vintages range, the 1996 Cuvee El Campanario was produced with pure Tempranillo from vines planted between 1991 and 1994. 1996 was a textbook vintage with winter rains and a warm summer that allowed for perfect ripeness of the grapes. The wine has only 12.8% alcohol but shows ripe black fruit notes and an herbal touch, spicy and peppery, with a medium-bodied palate where the tannins are fully resolved. It lacks a little in the mid-palate but finishes with clean flavors and good length. It has a tertiary profile with notes of iodine and soy sauce, with a darker personality than El Palomar from this same inaugural vintage that I tasted next to it. It's great to be able to compare these two wines after so many years in bottle. It was bottled in June 1998. They are releasing some 120 bottles now.
Critic scores
Robert Parker
Stephen Tanzer, Vinous
More reviews and scores
The 100% Tempranillo 1996 Cuvee Campanario represents a blend of the finest parcels of Tempranillo. The wine was aged in 100% new French Limousin oak for 16 months, then bottled without filtration. It reveals a saturated purple color, and is more backward both aromatically and on the palate, as well as more impressive. The wine's bouquet falls in the black fruit spectrum of aromas - blackberries, black raspberries, and overripe cherries. Full-bodied and tightly-knit, with intriguing mineral notes, this powerful, rich, layered wine could easily pass for a top-class Bordeaux in a blind tasting. The result of 28 days of maceration, the high tannin is sweet and well-integrated in the wine's framework. However, I would not recommend drinking this offering for 2-3 more years. Anticipated maturity: 2001-2020. Oct 1998, www.robertparker.com
Darkest ruby color. Spicy black raspberry, violet, licorice and toast aromas lifted by a chalky minerality. Fleshy entry, then very tight and backward, with powerful acids. A distinctly tougher style of wine, wrapped up in its own structure today. This will need several years of bottle aging to express itself. There will also be later-bottled special cuvees of 100% tempranillo and 100% cabernet from the '96 vintage, to be released next spring; barrel samples of these extremely impressive wines merited scores in the 93-95 range.