Cien y Pico Doble Pasta 2007
Old vine Grenache (100+ years) from the DO of Manchuela. This takes only 20% new oak and is so much the better for it than the more expensive Knights Errant, which sees about 1000% new oak (or something like that).
Bright and bursting full of cherry sauce, red fruits, potpourri, liquorice and earth. It’s ruggedly, but handsomely tannic, with a little black tea bitterness but has genuine quality and drinkability stamped all over it. Length is excellent, as is the satisfaction. Lovely wine. Tasted it first and ended up smashing though it later - a good sign. Drink : 2010 - 2017 93 points Gary Walsh, The Wine Front
Cien Y Pico means a 'hundred or so' in La Mancha, the southern Castilian meseta between the Mediterranean and Madrid, the land of Don Quixote. A wide, dry, plateau 1000 metres above sea level, surrounded by mountains that offer just enough protection from the icy winters that turn directly into hot summers. Here ancient plantings of Tintorera not only survive, but thrive in the organically poor but limestone rich, red, sandy Miocene era sedimentary clay between the rocky limestone outcrops that cover the vineyards. These ancient, gnarled, free standing bush vines grown on their own roots with just 300mm of rain a year, yielding tiny but intense crops.
