2012 Pingus

Dark purple. Heady, mineral-tinged scents of red and dark berry preserves, potpourri and candied licorice, with a sexy Asian spice nuance in the background. Sweet, high-pitched and delineated, offering densely packed red fruit, mineral and floral pastille flavors that are given spine by smoky minerality. Finishes very long and complex, with slow-building tannins and a lingering floral pastille quality.

Inky black. Very dry, dark and finely structured. Has some ripe fruit underneath but just now it is all framework, with the heart waiting to flower. Intense, firm, dry but so refined and so long. (JH)

I tasted the 2012 Pingus one week before bottling, so it should be pretty close to the final version as all the lots are assembled and everything is ready. But more than anything, the wine was so exciting that I could not wait until next year to let you know. The 2012 is produced with the biodynamically grown grapes from two very old Tempranillo plots (over 80 years of age), totaling 4.5 hectares in La Horra (Burgos): Barroso is located in an old Duero terrace with a gravel and sandy soil on a chalk and clay subsoil, and San Cristobal which is a clay southwest facing slope. In this vintage, 46% of the clusters fermented with the stems in small, 2,000-liter oak foudres. Malolactic fermentation was carried out in used French oak barrels and the wine was aged for 21 months in second-use French oak barriques: no new oak was used at all. 2012 is really impressive; the word that comes to mind is precision. It-s a really focused, sharp, elegant, harmonious and subtle Ribera, with a mixture of earth, fruit and spice singing in the same wave length. The palate is medium to full-bodied, with a level of precision and integration difficult to find. The tannins have an impressive silky texture, great length and persistence. I see Pingus coming to a new level with this vintage. 6,000 bottles will be filled in 2012. This is a superb vintage for Pingus, a good candidate for a perfect wine. I can only imagine how perfect these grapes were. I get butterflies in my stomach. Drink 2015-2028. ||I had a relaxed and superb tasting with Peter Sisseck, where we had time to discuss the wines and Ribera del Duero in general as Sisseck is now part of the Consejo Regulador. It was also a great learning experience as he showed me some experimental wines that resulted in adjustments from the 2012 vintage onward, and a big jump in precision for the wines, with the yet unbottled 2012 Pingus verging on perfection. He explained the range of wines he produces as it follows: PSI is the regional wine, Flor de Pingus is the village, and Pingus is the Cru. PSI is the newer wine in the lineup and the one that might require more explanation. In 2007, a difficult vintage in Ribera del Duero, he lost quite a lot of grapes for Flor de Pingus because of a big hailstorm, so he had to look for grapes he could purchase. He then realized how much Ribera had grown: from 6,000 hectares in 1985 to 9,000 hectares in 1990 and more than 22,000 hectares today! There is a big surplus of grapes, so the grapes from old vineyards are not valued. He decided that he wanted to support the people who were keeping their old vineyards and not ripping them up, or going to younger vines and high yields. He purchased their grapes, paid a fair price and produced PSI with them. Besides tasting extensively and slowly, I retasted 2010 Pingus and I also had the chance to preview the 2013 Pingus (clean, pure, with great acidity, but still too young) plus some experimental cuvees, some of which might see the light in the future. They have never produced better wines at Pingus. Bravo! Wine Advocate.August, 2014