Pesquera Tinto Riserva 2007
The 2007 Pesquera Reserva offers up a more complex aromatic array of balsam wood, espresso, lavender, incense, exotic spices, and assorted black fruits. Savory, ripe, and flavorful, it is in need of a bit more concentration, likely the result of the vintage. It will benefit from another 1-2 years of cellaring and drink well through 2022. 91 points Jay Miller Wine Advocate # 195 Jun 2011
Bodegas Alejandro Fernandez keeps rolling along turning out a surprisingly large amount of wine from Ribera del Duero, all of it produced from Tempranillo, while maintaining a high level of quality. In 1999 Alejandro Fernandez discovered a parcel of old, head-pruned Tempranillo in the historic windmill village of Campo de Criptana in La Mancha. Not generally considered a source of high quality grapes because of extreme summer heat, Fernandez has demonstrated that careful farming can overcome serious obstacles. The grapes for these two wines were harvested in the first two weeks of August, as hard as that is to believe once you have tasted the results. 91 points Jay Miller Wine Advocate # 195 Jun 2011
Overview: Founded in 1972. A living icon of Spanish wine and widely regarded as the "Master of the Tempranillo," Alejandro Fernández achieves naturally concentrated, elegant wines which are expressive in youth yet benefit greatly from age. Currently under vine in Pesquera are 500 acres, exclusively Tempranillo. Soil types include deep gravel relatively rare in the area and essential to the singularly complex "Pesquera" bouquet.
History: Alejandro Fernández personifies the mercurial 20th-century Spanish experience. A family breadwinner from the age of thirteen, he went on to learn several trades, beginning as a master carpenter. After military service he worked selling agricultural machinery but soon came to manufacture equipment of his own design, attaining national success with a revolutionary beet harvester. During all these years Alejandro harvested and made wine yearly from his own vineyards, nurturing a lifelong dream of establishing a bodega for the production of great red wines, following the traditions of his ancestors dating to Roman and Visigothic times.
In 1972, Alejandro and wife Esperanza licensed their bodega in Pesquera, the 16th-century lagar and press house serving as grape receiving and processing through the 1982 harvest. (His machine shop which ceased business in 1985 still serves as the source for stainless tanks and countless other items for vineyard and bodega.) Since 1982, fermentation has been of destemmed whole berries only, maceration varying from 12 to 20 days.
The unclarified wine goes directly to small oak after pressing. Barricas are an astute blend of American, Spanish and French oak, custom-cured and made by Spain's finest coopers. Innovations such as overhead lifts and Alejandro's patented barrel steamer facilitate the frequent racking process. Clarification is natural in the cold Castilian winters, assisted only occasionally with egg white fining prior to bottling. Neither filtration nor cold stabilization is practiced.
At a time when the region was pulling out vineyards in favor of irrigated row crops such as beets, Alejandro was augmenting and developing vineyards, his Viña Alta in 1972 the area's first to be wire-trained. A current total of over 500 acres of mature vineyard occupies a judiciously varied range of terroirs from gravel benchland to high mountain plateau (Llano Santiago, planted in 1993, lies at over 3200 feet overlooking the Duero Valley).
Wines produced by Alejandro Fernández are made exclusively from the difficult, quick-maturing Tempranillo variety, of which he is the acknowledged master. His world-famous Tinto Pesquera is aged a minimum of 18 months in oak, with selected Reservas and Grandes Reservas remaining in barrel for 24 months and longer.
