Score | Publication | Review | Copy |
93 | Vinous Media | Dark, glistening garnet. Smoke-accented dark berries, vanilla, potpourri and spicecake scents on the deeply perfumed nose; suggestions of woodsmoke and licorice add complexity. Fleshy, sweet and concentrated, offering intense blackberry, cherry cola and blueberry flavors and hints of mocha and fruitcake. The floral quality reappears on a very long, subtly tannic finish that leaves mocha and exotic spice notes behind. 2021 – 2030 Josh Raynolds - February 2021 |
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92+ | View from the Cellar | The “20 Meses” bottling from Bodegas Nuestro de Dias Bayo is their oldest vine cuvée, being made from seventy year-old vines that grow nine hundred meters above sea level. The wine is composed entirely of tempranillo, sees its malolactic fermentation take place in four hundred and fifty liter French casks and is raised for twenty months in these barrels prior to bottling. After bottling, the wine is given another year and a half of bottle aging in the cellar prior to release. The 2015 “20 Meses” comes in listed at fourteen percent octane and offers up a superb bouquet of sweet dark berries, black cherries, Cuban cigar wrapper, dark soil tones, bitter chocolate and smoky new oak. On the palate the wine is plush, full-bodied, focused and shows off beautiful mid-palate depth, with lovely focus and grip, fine-grained tannins and excellent length on the complex finish. The raw materials here are obviously superior to the “15 Meses” bottling, as the vines are so much older, but I wonder if a bit of this advantage was lost with the malolactic fermentation taking place in cask here? In any event, this is really good wine, which is starting to already drink very nicely, but which will be even better four or five years down the road. 2020-2050. Issue # 85 - January/February 2020 |