Spain
Altozano Tempranillo 2006
If you read Gourmet Traveler Wine, you would have seen this wine receive big wraps and (94 Pts) in a blind line up of Spanish and Aussie Tempranillos. While, I’m not as enthusiastic its great at this price and now comes in screwcap.
Its a media-crianza that sees 4 months in a mix of American, Hungarian and French oak. The grapes are from Toledo, hence the VDlT Castilla label.
The nose is full of blueberry, dark cherry and blackcurrant, with a hit of mulberry in the middle. Plenty of warm climate tempranillo character here, rich and generous mouth feel and soft tannins. Earthy blackcurrant, plum and dark cherry fruit, with some sarsaparilla. Complexity isn’t the name of the game here, its all about the bold fruit. The wood is really well handled too. At this price you can’t go wrong. 87 Pts.
Source: Broadway Liquor Distributors Price: $15 Closure: Conventional Cork
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Well I know who I’d be backing for an expert opinion. (hint not AGT).
GW
Isn’t it amazing what blind tasting results produce.For me its somewhere in between 89-90 considering its great price.Then again iam a bit bias..cheers
David is it possible for you to list the importer as well as distributor? I find myself often wandering who is bringing all these wines in so that I can potentially work with them.
Hi Miguel,
I actually only list the importers, in this case they are Broadway Liquor Distributors, which can be a bit confusing. You can also find a list of importers off the front page (here is a shortcut: http://www.tintoyblanco.com.au/importers/)
Cheers,
Dave
Thanks!
Yeah, this is OK for a quaffer but not much else. The bottle I tried was screwcap. How they could rate this better than the M2 or the Cillar de Silos or the Dehesa Gago or… ? I think it’s because most of the Spanish Tempranillo is way too spicy and outside of the Australian norm, while this example is pretty safe. Some of the Australian wines, like the Kellermeister, the Sanguine and the Burrumboot taste very Australian but not very Tempranillo - nice wines but they could be Shiraz or Grenache (when will we get the Penfolds version). I’m not fan of Spanish wines with brett - and there were a couple of those in their final lineup - but the Oz wines lack in basic varietal Tempranillo flavour.
I agree with just about all of that. This wine is more rounded and ready to go than many of the wines in the AGT line up as well and I think that plays a big part in blind lineups
I also found it odd that they didn’t have something from Pondalowie…
I took someone along to the AGT tasting who was not very experienced with Spanish wines and they could not believe the M2 did not outpoint this wine either.
They had cutoffs on price but don’t know why the Pondalowie wasn’t there, other than maybe they didn’t submit??
So was price part of the score? That may make more sense, ($15 for this wine, $55-65 for the M2).
For me these results highlight one of the problems with big tastings: anything a bit different can stand out and get big points. If you had to sit down and drink a glass of each of them, you would get a very different result.
You’d have to ask Peter Bourne.
Not sure I totally agree about the big tastings thing. In a professional or even just semi-serious tasting with some discipline you should be able to shake out the chaff by making people score (say Davis 20 scale - which I understand AGT used and then transposed to the 100 point scale) and also forcing them to describe/comment on the wines. From experience this is easier said than done but not unreasonable for a publication like AGT.
I agree with that, but you will always get wines that stand out in a big tasting that don’t look as great when you sit down to drink a bottle…most do however.