This post is also available in: Español (Spanish)
Maybe you’re one of the few lucky ones who have tried our Arzuaga Albillo 2007. This wine, chosen as the Peñín Guide’s Newcomer Wine for 2020, was released as a very limited edition since, thanks to its special production method and ageing characteristics, the production was also very limited. Thus, both for those who have already tried it as well as for everyone who hasn’t but who’d like to find out more about this unique offering from Arzuaga, we’ve shared a video tasting on our social media, led by Ignacio Arzuaga, the managing director of Bodegas Arzuaga, and Javier Bañales, our sales manager and brand ambassador.
If there are two main aspects that set this wine apart, they’re definitely the variety used to make it – the white grape Albillo – and its production process, with nearly eight years spent ageing in French oak. First of all, with regard to the variety that defines this wine, Bañales points out that while ‘Albillo is a variety that initially tends to be a bit flatter, not very expressive and sometimes gets reduced’, in this wine ‘it has its best version. Super expressive, direct, endless’. ‘I think Albillo isn’t a grape for making young, fresh wines. It’s more for looking for great aged wines,’ Arzuaga adds. And, as we mentioned above, this wine had a very long ageing process. ‘The Albillo holds on, and this wine shows that, having spent 93 months in French oak; it stands up to the ageing very well,’ affirms Bodegas Arzuaga’s Managing director.
So, what do we find when we taste the wine? The first thing that both Arzuaga and Bañales note is its acidity, which is pronounced despite the long time in oak. Moreover, as Arzuaga says, it’s ‘a wine that gives you a lot, because every time you smell it you find something new, and even on the palate: nuts, the next time marine or salty notes… it has everything and that’s really hard to find in a wine’. Bañales agrees with these sensations, maintaining that ‘sometimes I describe it as a little trip from Ribera del Duero and Albillo Mayor all the way to Jerez. You’re travelling through its oxidative notes; it seems like it’s had a film of yeast [that forms on the surface of the wine during the sherry ageing process], even though it hasn’t…’
All these nuances make it ‘a wine more for tasting because finding a pairing is actually difficult,’ explains Arzuaga. Our sales director shares this opinion when he says that ‘these wines are for drinking on their own. These are vini da meditazione, wines you drink to unwind, to get carried away by the wine itself, to dive into and where it keeps giving and you keep discovering’.
One of the keys to achieving this quality is the selection of both the grapes and the barrels in which the wine is aged. ‘It’s a selection of the best of everything we’ve made,’ explains Arzuaga, who affirms that ‘it may act a little, modestly, as the spearhead for Albillo in Ribera thanks to what it’s achieved and its great scores’.
Arzuaga Albillo 2007 is definitely a unique wine and one of the most special we’ve made at this winery, the ‘faithful reflection of the potential of a variety worked well and handled well’.