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PREMIUM

First taste: Alvaro Palacios 2020 new releases

With estates in Rioja, Priorat and Bierzo, Alvaro Palacios and Ricardo Pérez Palacios produce a varied portfolio of top wines. Sarah Jane Evans MW tastes and rates the new wines from the 2020 vintage.

The latest-release tasting of the wines of Alvaro Palacios and Ricardo Pérez Palacios in the cellars of Berry Bros & Rudd in London is always a must-attend. Inevitably this year uncle and nephew remained in Spain, and appeared via Zoom.


Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for the Alvaro Palacios 2020 new releases


Despite being filtered through the internet, Palacios had lost none of the energy that made him Decanter’s Man of the Year 2015. He has played an exceptional part in the elevation of the reputation of Spain’s wines internationally.

The fact that he has wineries in three regions of Spain – more or less Atlantic, Continental and Mediterranean – always makes tasting the wines fascinating, watching the ways he focuses ever more closely on the vineyard and the winemaking, and the changes he chooses to make.

The tasters had been sent the sample bottles of the 2020 vintage to which we have all become accustomed for Zoom tastings. Small sample bottles are never as perfect as full bottles in a regular en primeur tasting. What was gained instead was a very full discussion of the wines.

Vintage variation


Sarah Jane Evans MW rates the Alvaro Palacios 2020 new releases

Wines are listed in score order


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