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Tasting notes
Dark violet color. Impressively complex black and blue fruit, floral and oak spice qualities on the nose; smoky mineral and vanilla flourishes emerge as the wine stretches out. Concentrated and sweet yet lively as well, offering palate-staining boysenberry and cherry cola flavors underscored by a vein of juicy acidity. Shows serious depth of flavor but comes off graceful, with polished tannins framing an impressively long, penetrating and focused finish.
Critic scores
Average Score
Luis Gutiérrez, Wine Advocate
Tim Jackson MW, jancisrobinson.com
More reviews and scores
Made from 100% very old vine Tempranillo and aged 20 months in French oak, the 2016 Aalto PS is a thrilling, brilliant effort that offers both richness and elegance. Boasting beautifully pure notes of crème de cassis, graphite, spring flowers, and lead pencil shavings, it hits the palate with full-bodied richness and depth, yet stays weightless and elegant. It’s perfectly balanced, and again, has off-the-charts purity leading to a great finish. It needs 3-4 years of bottle age yet will keep for 2-3 decades.
100% Tempranillo from 80- to 100-year-old vines. 20 months in new French oak. Mid-deep ruby-purple. Clove, cordite and cinnamon oak, with again a touch of orange peel. Ripe blackberry and black-cherry fruit beneath the oak cloak. Robust, dense, compact tannins of a classic, modern-style Ribera, but there is the fruit weight to match it. A vin de garde – if nothing else, to let the oak integrate! (TJ)
I tasted an unbottled sample of the 2016 PS, which was the final blend waiting to be bottled in a couple of weeks. It's quite oaky—marked by the élevage of 19 months in new French oak—spicy, toasty and creamy. It has a full-bodied palate with abundant, fine-grained tannins. This will need time in bottle. It's a wine aimed for fans of powerful, concentrated and generously oaked wines. They expect to fill some 40,000 bottles in late June 2018.