The 2016 San Román Tinto, which is the winery’s flagship bottling, is comprised from one hundred percent old vine Tempranillo, with the vines ranging from sixty to more than ninety years of age, with all of these...
The 2016 San Román Tinto, which is the winery’s flagship bottling, is comprised from one hundred percent old vine Tempranillo, with the vines ranging from sixty to more than ninety years of age, with all of these vineyards certified organically-farmed. The wine is fermented with indigenous yeasts and raised in a combination of three-quarters French oak and one-quarter American casks, with both two hundred and twenty-five and five hundred liter barrels utilized. Only twenty-five percent of the oak is new. The wine offers up a superb bouquet, wafting from the glass in a mix of black cherries, black plum, Cuban cigar, a touch of anise, clove-like spice tones, a fine base of soil and a very refined foundation of new oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and impressively transparent for its octane level (it is listed at 14.5 percent, but carries it seamlessly and seems cooler in the mouth), with a great core of fruit, impeccable focus and balance and a very long, ripely tannic and very classy finish. This is one of the best young examples of Toro I have tasted in ages, but one would expect this from a winery founded by Mariano Garcia (of Vega Sicilia fame) and now run by his two sons, Alberto and Eduardo Garcia!