100% Maturana Tinta.
2.064 bottles.
Maturana Tinta is a grape variety indigenous to Rioja which is not grown anywhere else in the world. Recovered after years of work and research, it features a small, compact cluster of small berries. It is very sensitive to botrytis, late sprouting, but early ripening.
Manual grape harvest of each grape variety in small ten-kilogram tubs. Cooling in cold room until the temperature of the grapes goes down to 3 °C. Double selection of clusters and grains, with mild destemming and crushing. Gravity-fed into French oak vats with no pumping and individual vinification by plot. Cold macerated and fermented for 20 days with native yeast strains. Gravity racked to new and second-year French oak barrels before malolactic fermentation.
14-month stay in barrels from different cooperages, with different toasting levels and origins, without racking and remaining over lees until bottled, with periodic bâtonnages during the first months. The wine is bottled without filtering or fining, so a small amount of natural precipitate may appear over time.
Our bottle is inspired in an original eighteenth-century bottle that is on exhibit at the Vivanco Museum of the Culture of Wine.
Very deep purplish-red, with a marked purple rim. Spicy aromas, with dark fruit, peppercorns, cloves, mulberry leaves, against a mineral and underbrush background. Very balsamic and mineral in the mouth, also with spicy sensations (peppercorns, roses, cummin, cloves) with an elegant, vibrant mouthfeel and long finish.
All kinds of char-grilled and roasted meats, cured cheese and game dishes.
The year was marked by a uniform distribution of rainfall particularly concentrated between October and December with close to 200 l/m2. Aggregate rainfall figures for the agricultural year came to 447 l/m2 with an average temperature of 12 °C, giving the vintage a more continental character.
Reduced vigour in both plots allowed us to discard tipping operations. To enhance grape ripening, we carried out the shoot thinning later than usual and a light leaf plucking around the clusters at the start of veraison to improve sun exposure. In mid-August, cluster thinning operations were carried out in both plots, removing the more compact clusters (a very common operation in this grape variety). Harvest was carried out on 29 October.