La Poulosa, La Vizcaina de Vinos, Bierzo, 2017

Name: La Poulosa, La Vizcaina de Vinos, Bierzo
Brand: Raúl Pérez
Price: 160.73 GBP

Available Vintages

all 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

justerini & brooks tasting note

La Poulosa exudes headier, bluer fruit with notes of salted Scandinavian liquorice, fresh blueberries and currants, with notes of brioche and cracked clay. Creamy, plush on the palate, mouth-filling and sweetly fruited without feeling heavy, with a lovely purity and brightness to the succulent, gorgeous fruit – a real crowd pleaser. From clay dominated soils at 550m of elevation and facing east, planted in 1936. Four separate plots total 1.7 hectares across the vineyard. Good water retaining soils have proved their worth in the warmer 2017 vintage, for there is nothing overblown or overstretched about this – just ripe, creamy, classy fruit. A higher proportion of Garnacha here in the field blend, up to around 20%, whole bunch fermented, and a more limited skin contact of around 25-30 days. Aged for a year in neutral 225L barriques.

critic reviews

92/100Josh Raynolds,Vinous

Bright ruby. Ripe red and blue fruits, licorice and an exotic spice nuance on the mineral-inflected nose. Appealingly sweet cassis, bitter cherry and blueberry flavors deepen, spread out and take on a mocha nuance with air. Subtly gripping tannins frame a long, smoky finish that emphatically repeats the blue fruit and floral notes.

DRINKING WINDOW 2022 - 2030

date of review 06/2021

92/100Luis Gutierrez,Robert Parker Wine Advocate

I tasted the 2017 and 2018 vintages of the La Vizcaina range, and the style of the years is radically different: 2017 is more Mediterranean (more Rhone-ish) with some sensations that make you think of slate, wines of more sun, and 2018 is truly continental, fragrant, more Burgundian. La Poulosa is always the rounder and riper of the four reds from La Vizcaina. The 2017 La Vizcaina La Poulosa is gentler, riper and a little more generous, and it's the one where the two vintages are less different. In this 2017, the sun of the year shows morethe palate is soft, ripe and tender, with moderate acidity. This is very approachable. Each plot now has barrels from a specific tonnelier, but they are moving toward larger barrels; in 2017, there was a significant percentage of 225-liter barrels that were replaced in 2018 and basically disappeared in 2019. 5,500 bottles produced. The 2017s were bottled in early May 2019, when the barrels were filled with the following vintage.

DRINKING WINDOW 2020 - 2024

date of review 06/2020