2017 Alvaro Palacios Les Aubaguetes

The newest single-vineyard bottling is already in its third vintage. The 2017 Les Aubaguetes was produced with the grapes from a steep 1.28-hectare coster plot of vines planted in the early years of the 20th century. It's a blend of 75% Garnacha, 23% Cariñena and 2% Garnacha Blanca and Macabeo. It had a long maceration of 49 days and an élevage of 16 months in different oak containers. The soils are very dark, and the grapes tend to ripen very late, resulting in a slow and proper ripeness. The grapes were very healthy and the bunches quite loose and produced a very pure, expressive and showy wine. They picked the grapes on October 15 and 16, extremely late for the conditions of the year. This is very open and expressive and feels like the most exuberant of all the wines from 2017. There is ripeness and concentration, which is not surprising when you realize they only got 12.6 hectoliters per hectare, extremely low yields. Despite the high-ish percentage of Cariñena, you can hardly feel it, and the Garnacha seems to dominate the character of the wine. 2,200 bottles were filled in May 2019.