Ultreia, El Rapolao, Bierzo, 2019

Situated just 200m from Cova de la Raposa, El Rapolao is the vineyard seeing the most local interest and attention amongst young producers. Raúl is the majority owner with approximately half of the 6HA. Moreover, as of 2020, the Ultreia bottling will include an additional 0.2HA that was taken away from the Pérez family in 1936 at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, and that Raúl finally managed to rebuy in 2019. Until then, the Ultreia bottling is still extremely limited and comes from a total of 0.3HA split between two steep high plots, one at 630m (80% of the blend) and one at 580m. Both are on hard, dark clay some organic material in the soil. The vines are 120 years old, comprised Mencia, Trousseau and Alicante Bouschet, yielding just 3,000kg per hectare (half that of the La Vizcaina bottling). Ultreia El Rapolao 2019 was fermented with whole bunches and saw only 1 month of skin contact before aging in 30% new oak for a year. A total of 1200L was produced. Plums, blackcurrant, leather, cloves and black raspberry – an amazing, high acid wine with layer upon layer of complexity and bags of old vine concentration that will see it develop over decades.