2022 Zarate Albarino Rías Baixas, Galicia

The young, eponymous and unoaked Albariño 2022 Zarate feels stunning, super balanced, clean, expressive and round, a crowd pleaser. It's complex and harmonious, elegant and gentle. It's super tasty, with fully developed aromas and flavors and a long, salty finish. It has 13% alcohol and a soft texture. It's approachable, but it will also age. 60,000 bottles were produced. It was bottled in 10,000 bottle lots from February to June/July 2023.

I tasted a combination of wines from 2020 to 2022 from Zarate. 2022 was a very warm year, and it didn't rain in July or August, something quite unusual; it rained in early September, which saved the harvest, as the plants were nearly blocked. The wines have a little more alcohol and are more immediate and round. 2021 was almost the opposite, like going back to the vintages from the 1990s, cold, difficulties reaching ripeness, high acidity with quite a lot of malic acid (they have always tried to do full malolactic in their wines, which for them was the tradition); in 2021, they did malolactic in all wines (not the case in 2022), so it's a classical year with wines that have aging potential. I only tasted a handful of 2020s, the coronavirus vintage. It was a short vintage with irregular fruit setting and a warm summer, and the wines are developing quite quickly.

93+ points robertparker.com

Highly textural, mineral wine with a gravelly granitic mouth feel overlaid with apple florals and grapefruit zing. Aromatics and texturality are beautifully matched: pretty and direct jasmine, elderflower, granny smith, green citric zest, sherbety acidity, sandy minerals, a titch of lanolin creaminess and a delicate bitter herb crunch to finish.