2021 El Nido Clio
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Tasting notes
Full bottle 1,518 g. Beautiful label , terrible bottle – please, Familia Gil, reduce your bottle weights. Oh gods, it's impossible to explain just how exactly like dark chocolate this wine smells, and then tastes. I had a weird moment, trying to work out what this oh-so-familiar taste and aroma was, with my brain telling me, 'not wine'. Some craft chocolate has beautiful cherry acidity and cherry-stone minerality, and if I was to pin it down, it would be one of those chocolates – probably 87–90% cacao content. The alcohol is caricature crazy but if you poured yourself a thimbleful, you might be able to get past the heat to pick up some nuances: blood orange, orange peel, dried Mediterranean herbs. I just wonder if it wouldn't be possible to manage the canopy, soil and picking of these vines to make a wine that tasted less of raisins and port and more of the vineyard. (TC)
Critic scores
Julia Harding MW, jancisrobinson.com
Tamlyn Currin, jancisrobinson.com
More reviews and scores
70% Monastrell, 30% Cabernet-Sauvignon. The Monastrell from 88-year-old vines, the Cabernet Sauvignon from 38-year-old vines. All ungrafted. Monastrell at 750–800 m; Cabernet Sauvignon at 700 m. Average yield 1,000–1,500 kg/ha. Deep garnet. Ripe and dark-fruited and just a touch minty. You can smell the cassis, with a hint of capsicum, of the Cabernet. Marked by the Cabernet and the oak on the palate. Powerful, polished. Lots to get your teeth into. Needs time. (JH)
The 2021 Clio is a blend of 70% Monastrell and 30% Cabernet Sauvignon, sourced from the 1936-planted Zingla Vineyard in Jumilla. Aged for 23 months in French and American oak, this garnet-hued wine offers complex aromas of herbs and plums, complemented notes of mint, balsamic and ash. Concentrated and rich on the palate, it flows with a silky texture, culminating in a velvety finish. This is a ripe, sun-kissed red with a precisely executed barrel-aging regimen.
The 2021 Clio is ripe and heady with 16% alcohol and generous oak. It's faithful to the house style, but like many other wines from the 2021 vintage from the Gil family, this also came through as fresher and more balanced than the 2020 counterpart. It has a full-bodied palate with abundant but finer tannins. 50,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in September 2023.