The 2019 Prima’ bottling from Bodegas San Román is their “young vine” cuvée, as these organically-farmed vines range from fifteen to fifty years of age! The cépages includes fifteen percent Garnacha to go along with the Tempranillo, and the wine is fermented with indigenous yeasts and raised in a combination of seventy-five percent French and twenty-five percent American oak vessels for fourteen months prior to bottling. The wine offers up a bit of smoked meat tones from the inclusion of the Garnacha, with scents of dark berries, black cherries, a touch of leather, meaty elements, cigar smoke and spicy new oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, ripe and complex, with a fine core of fruit, ripe, well-integrated tannins and a long, balanced finish that shows a bit of backend heat on the close. This is a very well-made bottle of Toro, but it strikes me as perhaps a touch higher in octane than its stated 14.5 percen

John Gilman - John Gilman (91+)