2014 Contador
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Tasting notes
Inky ruby. An explosively perfumed bouquet evokes red and blue fruit liqueur, incense, exotic spices, cola and floral oils. Stains the palate with sweet, oak-spiced black raspberry, blueberry, fruitcake and vanilla flavors that stretch out and pick up a smoky mineral element with aeration. Shows a remarkable interplay of richness and energy, revealing no rough edges and conveying a spherical quality to its texture. Rounded, velvety tannins build slowly on an endless spice- and floral-driven finish that leaves a sappy red berry preserve note behind.
Critic scores
Luis Gutiérrez, Wine Advocate
Josh Raynolds
More reviews and scores
There was no 2013 produced, so I tasted the current 2014 Contador, the vintage that follows the 2012. Tasting a new vintage of Contador is always a very intense moment. I had previewed the 2014 when I visited the winery in the summer of 2016, when the wine was very obviously young but showed very promising. All those promises seem to have made it intact into the bottle. It's intense, pungent, ripe without excess, with aromas of spices, exotic woods, balsam, earth, wild flowers and berries. The palate is medium to full-bodied, with fine-grained tannins, a nice texture and pungent and persistent flavors. It has the balance and stuffing to develop nicely in bottle, and it will surely be better in a couple of years. 5,900 bottles were filled in May 2016.