Comando G Tumba del Rey Moro 2012
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Robert
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This is a new wine first released in 2012 from a vineyard close to the grave of a Moor king, hence its name. The 2012 Tumba del Rey Moro comes from a north-facing, 1,100-meter-altitude vineyard that is located in village of Villanueva de Ávila. This is a half-hectare of vineyard with ungrafted, head-pruned Garnacha on cool, pure granite soils. It produces very light, ethereal, elegant and cool wines like this 2012. This could be their most extreme and telluric wine; very pale and sharp as a knife, with elusive aromas of earth, minerals, flower petals and a citric, blood-orange note. The palate is even sharper, delineated and laser cut with high acidity, not very concentrated, but really powerful, intense and wild. This is Garnacha in its most extreme expression, and is today the most aromatic and impressive of all the Comando G reds. Is this the big brother of Las Umbrias?
Daniel Landi and Fernando Garcia, friends since college, found themselves working in the area centered around the Sierra de Gredos: Daniel at his family’s estate, Bodegas Jimenez-Landi and Fernando at Bodega Marañones. Drawn to the mountains and rumors of small, nearly inaccessible vineyard plots located high in the Sierra de Gredos, over time they began purchasing and leasing the best sites they could find, creating their own project, Comando G in 2008. Along with the pioneers of the Priorat, Daniel and Fernando are redefining what was previously viewed as a workhorse variety, Garnacha, into something that can rival the elegance and finesse of Pinot in Burgundy or Syrah in the northern Rhône.
The vineyards that Daniel and Fernando have assembled are all farmed biodynamically. These vines all range in age from 50 to 80 years old and are planted on sandy soils weathered from granite, slate and quartz. A combination of high altitude, freely draining soils, and a mild and fairly humid micro-climate – for central Spain – guarantees a long growing season and a modest alcohol level in the finished wines. The resultant wines are startlingly pale, extraordinarily aromatic and intensely flavorful. Each site is harvested by hand, usually in October, fermented by indigenous yeasts in open top French oak casks then aged in a combination of 500-700L French oak barrels, foudre and clay amphorae.
Each vineyard site, labeled as Vino de Parcela, are expressive of place. Tumba del Rey Moro, one of the newest sites, answers the question, what if Marcel Lapierre made Rayas? While Rumbo al Norte shows a more generous profile where the minerality is hidden by juicier fruit and greater tannin. Finally Las Umbrias shows incredible poise and balance weaving together florality, pure mineral, delicate fruit and mouth tingling tannin. Together these wines could aptly be called Grand Cru Garnacha.
Spanish red wine is known for being bold, heady, rustic and age-worthy, Spain is truly a one-of-a-kind wine-producing nation. A great majority of the country is hot, arid and drought-ridden, and since irrigation has only been recently introduced and (controversially) accepted, viticulture has sustained—and flourished—only through a great understanding of Spain’s particular conditions. Large spacing between vines allows each enough resources to survive and as a result, the country has the most acreage under vine compared to any other country, but is usually third in production.
Of the Spanish red wines, the most planted and respected grape variety is Tempranillo, the star of Spain’s Rioja and Ribera del Duero regions. Priorat specializes in bold red blends, Jumilla has gained global recognition for its single varietal Monastrell and Utiel-Requena has garnered recent attention for its reds made of Bobal.