Vega Sicilia Pintia Toro 2018  £65.69

Vega Sicilia Pintia Toro 

The independent member of the Vega Sicilia family. Pintia is young, intense and ground-breaking in nature.

Proud of its origin, it has managed to reinterpret the Vega Sicilia culture in an innovative, brave and daring manner, at the head of the emergence of a new generation of Toro wines.

As is the case of all TEMPOS Vega Sicilia wines, the harvest is by hand with the fruit being placed in 12-kg boxes and grapes, once in the winery, they are left in a cold chamber for 12 hours in order to preserve their fruit intensity.

Along with the selection of the wine, a double sorting is carried out in the winery. This first remove those bunches that may have been wrongly picked in the field and the second focuses on the substandard berries that are found on optimum bunches. Cold maceration is carried out for 5 days prior to fermentation in oak wood vats.

95 Points  - Penin Guide

94+ Points - RobertParker.com

Toro (almost) didn't suffer the frost of 2017 that decimated Ribera del Duero, and in that early harvest, the grapes for the 2017 Pintia were picked between September 6th and 17th trying to keep the freshness and acidity. They also did a softer extraction, reduced the percentage of wine that went through malolactic in barrel and used less American oak for the élevage, trying to achieve a more elegant wine. Still the wine is ripe, juicy, round and powerful at 15% alcohol, with a mellow palate with a pH of 3.9 and 4.5 grams of acidity. The wine matured in new and used oak barrels for 12 months. It feels quite fresh and harmonious, not showing any heat, not as fresh and atypical as 2016. It keeps the poise and the balance and has abundant but fine tannins. These wines repay time in bottle, and even if approachable now, it should get better with time. It's like a refined version of the 2015. A triumph over the adverse conditions of the year. 204,240 bottles, 6,720 magnums and some larger formats produced. It was bottled in May 2019.

Luiz Gutierrez