2013 Pintas

The 2013 Pintas, the winery's traditional flagship, is a field blend sourced from 85+ year old vines; aged for 20 months in a 60/40 mixture of new and used French barriques. It comes in at 14.5% alcohol. This shows fine concentration, beautiful structure, intensity on the finish and harmony in its future. The bragging point here is the defined and focused fruit. It just "pops" on the palate in terms of fruit flavor. It is pretty delicious. It should have a nice life, too. I've been expanding drinking windows of late, as the wines gain more track record. It might well do better still. In the meanwhile, it could use a few years of cellaring to show its best. It should hit stride more around 2020 or so, even though it may be approachable much sooner. It does have some questions to answer in the cellar, but at the moment it seems very impressive and likely to answer them.