It has a clean nose with aromas of white and yellow fruit with yeasty aromas of bread dough, with elegance and harmony. The must fermented in 500-liter French oak barrels where it aged in contact with the lees for eight months, but didn’t go through malolactic fermentation (it has a pH of 3.1). It is a barrel-fermented and aged white produced with white Godello grapes grown in El Bierzo, but sold as Vino de la Tierra de Castilla y Leon that will be offered together with the reds as “the white Mauro.” The grapes come from a young vineyard they planted with sticks from Valdeorras, which are located at 700 meters altitude and where harvested relatively early in such late, Atlantic vintage as 2013 to preserve acidity. In fact, the 2013 Godello was about to be bottled when I met with Eduardo and Alberto Garcia to taste their wines and they presented this white, something they had been hoping to do for a while. It’s very approachable and one of the few VS bottlings that delivers instant gratification. If 2017 was an atypical year, this is atypical within that: the wine is lighter, more aromatic and open with lots of finesse and elegance. It’s a selection from two 70-year-old vineyards in the village of Traspinedo and Tudela, and it matured in French oak barrels for 26 months. They picked the second week of September to preserve the freshness of the grapes and did a short maceration and soft vinification. However, the effect of the frost here was different, as they didn’t suffer the big frost of the night of the 28th of April the frost here was on the 1st of May and was not as severe (-2 degrees Celsius), so the grapes were from the first generation, not the second like in some places in Ribera del Duero. The 2017 VS was cropped from a dry year marked by spring frosts that reduced the yield and resulted in their earliest harvest to date. Although time in bottle will permit even more seamless integration of fruit and wood while also bringing up additional savory notes, this is an exemplary wine that demonstrates Ribera del Duero’s remarkable ability to conjure up wines that are delicious upon release or in mid-life, but that can also become something quite different and wonderful if held for a decade after the vintage. Not too ripe, or extracted, or oaky, it wears its power and intensity very gracefully. Impressively concentrated and deeply flavored, this presents itself authoritatively on the palate, and yet is not overbearing in any respect. Concentrated pigments offer a visual indication of what is to come, and the bouquet follows right in line, offering notes of ripe fruit that are very nicely balanced against spicy wood aromas. Clearly excellent in all respects, even at this young age and right from when the cork is first pulled, this will nevertheless improve for years to come. This wine is to be considered in the context of Ribera del Duero even if it doesn’t bear that appellation (due a long running dispute over how the appellation boundaries were drawn), and indeed it was among the stars of the region from its first appearance.
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