Valdegines 2012 75cl

A firm wine with wonderful silky tannins and a sexy austerity. Chalk and dark berry too. Full-bodied and reserved. Very long. Beautiful intensity and length. Tension as well. From east facing single vineyard Laguardia at 650 meters. Drink or hold.

The 2012 Valdeginés is a very fresh, single-vineyard Tempranillo that always has plenty of licorice and even aniseed aromas. As they do with all the single-vineyard wines, Valdeginñes is also fermented in oak vats and matured in French oak barriques. This is a cool vineyard that produces fresh wines, perhaps more Atlantic than those from 2011. It has a fine texture, good acidity and is a happy wine. It doesn't have the strict minerality found in other vineyards like Carretil; here the fruit is more upfront. There is no need to wait but time will bring extra complexity. 12,000 bottles produced. 2012 seems to be e very good vintage for Artadi, ripe and powerful, but with very well-integrated oak, serious wines. For the three wineries they have (Artadi in Rioja, Artazu in Navarra and El Sequé in Alicante), proprietor Juan Carlos López de Lacalle wants to simplify the range of wines, first an entry-level line of local varietal wines, Tempranillo, Garnacha and Monastrell, (Tempranillo by Artadi). The second line is village wines (so Viñas de Gaín will disappear as a brand and will be turned into Viñas de Laguadia, Viñas de Leza and Viñas de Elvillar in future vintages, and Pagos Viejos will be turned into a special collector's items) and then single-vineyard wines. In Alicante and Navarra they don't have single-vineyard wines for now, while for Artadi they will continue with the four they offer now. This change will be for the 2014 harvest. Tasting them slowly I came to the conclusion that, following the Burgundian model, the hierarchy of the single vineyards is as follows: El Pisón and El Carretil would be the Grand Crus and Valdeginés and La Poza de Ballesteros would be the 1er Crus. And the big news is, of course, that they are leaving the Rioja appellation before the end of 2015!