2017 Algueira Carravel, Ribeira Sacra

Both Algueira’s flagship Mencías are released five years after harvest. While the Pizarra hails from the warmer terroir of the Carballo Cobo vineyard, Carravel is drawn from several old-vine terraces which hug a cool zone of perilously steep slate and schist soils in the Doade subregion. The fruit was hand-harvested, then foot-trodden and fermented with roughly 20% whole bunches in large wooden tronconique vats before spending between 12 and 24 months in neutral 600-litre barrels (and some very old barriques).

At five years of age, the 2017 is perfectly pitched with scents of black raspberry fruit, liquorice root, mountain herbs, dried flowers and a gentle waft of spice. The slow-building structure and latent power are elegantly offset by deep-rooted freshness and mineral-wreathed length. According to Jesús Barquín and the authors of ‘The Finest Wines of Rioja and Northwest Spain’, this is a wine that “… has more in common with a fine Côte de Nuits than with the image most people have of Spanish reds.” Take that as gospel!