Bodegas Arrocal Seleccion Especial Tempranillo 2020 Ribera del Duero, Spain

Bodegas Arrocal Seleccion Especial Tempranillo 2020 Ribera del Duero, Spain
Bodegas Arrocal 2020 “Selección Especial” is such a silky sexpot of a Tempranillo that few blind tasters will believe it spent 18 months in oak, 50% of it new (even when learning that all the barrels were French). The only way to explain the delightful result must be the quality of the fruit, drawn from the single site Los Astrales vineyard, which was planted nearly 40 years ago. The aromas feature ripe fruit notes much more than ones that are wood-derived, and though there are spice notes that offset the dark cherry fruit beautifully, the fruit stays in the foreground from the first whiff through the last sensory signal in the wine’s finish. For a 2020 wine to showcase fruit that can already outrun both the tannin and oak load is remarkable, but this wine’s track record shows that it can improve for at least a decade. By the 10-year mark from now, I worry that my score will look embarrassingly stingy in retrospect. All the Arrocal wines offer excellent value at their various levels, but it is hard not to see this as the sweet spot buy in the lineup.