Chink in my armour: Ribera Del Duero
What’s your wine weakness? I often highlight the importance of always trying new wines to broaden your knowledge, keep your palette objective and unearth unknown jewels 💎 But who am I kidding? Wine from Ribera Del Duero just swoons me out of pocket every time 😍
📍 Ribera Del Duero is a Spanish wine region, north of Madrid: Ribera on the river Duero (a.k.a The Douro in northern Portugal, where Port is made)
⛰️It’s all in the altitude
There’s a lot of sun here to ripen the grapes but grapes that ripen too quickly will result in simple wines. Enter our complexity hero: the vineyards are located 2,000 ft above sea level which means the nights are exceptionally cold. This slows down the ripening so the grapes have plenty of time to develop complex, deep black fruit flavours, a whopping load of tannin and inky black colour .
🍇 Grape
Tempranillo here is king; but to keep you on your wine toes, it goes by two other pen names: Tinto Fino or Tinto del País.
Although Tempranillo is also the protagonist of drenched-in-glory neighbouring region of Rioja, the wines are starkly different. Rioja offers the strawberry fruit, mushroom, sweet coconut, and silky tannin. Whereas, Ribera Del Duero is midnight black, mouth-vice tannin, black brambly fruit, spicy liquorice, with a touch of vanilla pod on the finish. Someone at a tasting recently described it as a ‘wine you drink with one eye closed’ 😵💫😂
Cheese, please 🧀
Although Ribera can be one whopping, grippy mouthful on its own, just add cheese and you can tame this dragon into a slinky little softy. Have it with something powerful like #lincolnshirepoacher #agedgouda styles, #vintagecheddar . The journey of the two together will elevate your taste buds 💋
🍷❤️🔥 Here’s three beauties that you can get your hands on:
(pictured left to right)
🔸 Raíz de Guzmán Crianza 2013 from @akeandhumphris Harrogate, £21.99
🔸 Bohórquez Reserva, 2011 from @thewinesociety1874 (online) £23
🔸 Bodegas del Jaro 2018 from @the_gilded_grape Ilkely, £24
📍 Ribera Del Duero is a Spanish wine region, north of Madrid: Ribera on the river Duero (a.k.a The Douro in northern Portugal, where Port is made)
⛰️It’s all in the altitude
There’s a lot of sun here to ripen the grapes but grapes that ripen too quickly will result in simple wines. Enter our complexity hero: the vineyards are located 2,000 ft above sea level which means the nights are exceptionally cold. This slows down the ripening so the grapes have plenty of time to develop complex, deep black fruit flavours, a whopping load of tannin and inky black colour .
🍇 Grape
Tempranillo here is king; but to keep you on your wine toes, it goes by two other pen names: Tinto Fino or Tinto del País.
Although Tempranillo is also the protagonist of drenched-in-glory neighbouring region of Rioja, the wines are starkly different. Rioja offers the strawberry fruit, mushroom, sweet coconut, and silky tannin. Whereas, Ribera Del Duero is midnight black, mouth-vice tannin, black brambly fruit, spicy liquorice, with a touch of vanilla pod on the finish. Someone at a tasting recently described it as a ‘wine you drink with one eye closed’ 😵💫😂
Cheese, please 🧀
Although Ribera can be one whopping, grippy mouthful on its own, just add cheese and you can tame this dragon into a slinky little softy. Have it with something powerful like #lincolnshirepoacher #agedgouda styles, #vintagecheddar . The journey of the two together will elevate your taste buds 💋
🍷❤️🔥 Here’s three beauties that you can get your hands on:
(pictured left to right)
🔸 Raíz de Guzmán Crianza 2013 from @akeandhumphris Harrogate, £21.99
🔸 Bohórquez Reserva, 2011 from @thewinesociety1874 (online) £23
🔸 Bodegas del Jaro 2018 from @the_gilded_grape Ilkely, £24