This post is also available in: Español (Spanish)
Since the lockdown began at Arzuaga, we’ve been committed to helping entertain you and to teach you more about wine and Ribera del Duero in our online tastings. As well as in video format, we want to give you an idea of these tastings through our blog, so that you can discover everything we’re going to tell you with a glass in your hand.
On that note, today it’s time to talk about our Arzuaga Gran Reserva 2010, with a tasting led from home by Bodegas Arzuaga’s cellarman, Javier Herrero. It’s undoubtedly one of our most special red wines. Due to the specific acidity and ripening needed to make it, this wine isn’t one that’s made every year. Specifically, the 2010 vintage is a blend of 95% Tempranillo and 5% Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, from our La Planta estate. The alcoholic fermentation took place, as Herrero explains, ‘in small wooden containers, a fairly slow fermentation,’ while ‘the malolactic fermentation was done in completely new French oak and, once finished, the wine spent 48 months in the barrels’.
Moving on to the different tasting stages, visually it’s a wine ‘with an intense colour, very bright, very clean, with a ruby red hue’. On to the nose, our Gran Reserva reveals ‘a very wide range of nuances. It has notes of spices, mineral tones, lots of ripe fruit and we see that those 48 months in oak are present, but it’s oak that has great harmony with the fruit that’s in this kind of wine,’ remarks Herrero.
Finally, when we reach the tasting stage, on the palate we find ‘pure balance’, as the Bodegas Arzuaga cellarman affirms. ‘They’re wines that need a lot of time, a lot of oxygen. But what captivates us is its initial freshness’. Here, as well as the presence of the fruit, we find the hints of oak provided by the 48 months spent in the barrel. A ‘fine and elegant’ oak. ‘What’s most surprising is its length on the palate. It’s a very impeccable wine,’ concludes Herrero.
Now it’s your turn. We invite you to uncork a bottle of Arzuaga Gran Reserva 2010 and discover everything we’ve told you about in this post.