This post is also available in: Español (Spanish)
As you know, at Arzuaga we’re trying to make this lockdown situation a bit more pleasant for you, so, to do this, we’re presenting a series of video tastings on our social media that we hope will help you to enjoy our Arzuaga wines at home even more, in addition to helping you to have a good time!
You’ve probably already seen our first two online tastings (Arzuaga Reserva and Arzuaga Crianza), which we were able to record at the Arzuaga complex. However, as for most of you, for us, the lockdown means that we have to do our duty and stay home. So, the houses of some members of the Arzuaga team are turning into makeshift sets for recording the new instalments of these video tastings.
Today, we’re going to talk about the first of these tastings, recorded by our winemaker Adolfo González, who explains one of our most well-known and sought-after wines: the young red La Planta. This is a single-variety wine made using Tempranillo, a grape that, as Adolfo explains, ‘is harvested from the La Planta estate’. The fruit, this very typical grape from Ribera del Duero, gains a lot of prominence in this wine. So much so that, as our winemaker notes, ‘it’s what has to stand out over everything else’.
Following the harvest, the wine spends six months in barrels to ‘combine and improve all the aromas that the Tempranillo itself gives us,’ explains Adolfo. As he points out, ‘the main thing is to look for varietal aromas, those notes the terroir gives us’. This is all aimed at achieving ‘a fresh wine that’s easy to drink, very elegant and that has lots of fruit’.
The three stages of the tasting
As we’ve mentioned in previous posts, wine tasting consists of three main stages: appearance, nose and palate.
In terms of the appearance, Adolfo remarks that ‘we have a richly coloured wine, with notes of purple and violet tones’. It’s worth pointing out that this characteristic indicates the youth of the wine in particular.
As for the second stage, the nose, our Bodegas Arzuaga winemaker notes its intensity, without even swirling the glass, saying, ‘just by pouring it into the glass, we already found that the intensity was high’. After swirling the glass, the Tempranillo is again at the forefront: ‘the first thing you get is red fruit, that red fruit we look for from the variety’. Together with this, ‘the six months of barrel ageing combine perfectly with balsamic, toasted tones and notes of cacao,’ Adolfo explains.
Lastly, on the palate, La Planta is a wine that’s ‘very easy to drink, fresh, pleasant, with a feeling of volume and an aftertaste that again reminds us of that Tempranillo fruit’.
Now you just need to pour yourself a glass of La Planta and discover everything Adolfo González showed us. Cheers!