First taste: Alvaro Palacios 2022 new releases

There’s something of a family feeling about the annual London ‘Tasting of the 2022 Vintage in Advance’ of the Palacios properties in Priorat, Bierzo and Rioja. It’s held in the sub-basement cellar of Berry Bros & Rudd, with its rugged, uneven floors, across the road from St James’s Palace. As ever, each guest is provided with an elegant, hard cover, cloth-bound, gold-embossed tasting book.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for the Alvaro Palacios 2022 new releases

Just as with the precision of the wines, the tasting book itself reveals a principle of attention to detail – whether in the vineyard, the winery or in printed materials. What’s more, this isn’t a typical noisy London tasting, busy with guests talking to each other. The tasters here are much more focused. The new vintage is what matters, and everyone wants to talk to the producers.

A key feature of this tasting is that there’s not an export director in sight. It’s a simple family outing: uncle Alvaro Palacios and nephew Ricardo Pérez Palacios stand behind the tables, pouring and talking. The one concession to technology was the stylish vineyard video playing behind the tasting tables.

Buy now, drink later

One obvious verdict on these wines is their distinctive drinkability. There are a number of wines in the 2022 release that will benefit from ageing in bottle, but at the same time they are drinkable now. The risk is that too many will be enjoyed too young, just because of their charm. Thus the message is, if you want to be sure of being able to enjoy them in the future, purchase them now.

Notable too is the subtlety of the oak management. The third feature – a key to 2022 with its heat and drought – is the freshness of the wines. Palacios observes that 2022, like 2017, was a very early harvest. He adds wryly: ‘Gone are the days of wineries closing down for August for holidays. Harvest dates are getting earlier and earlier; people will be taking their holidays in July.’

Both in Priorat and in Bierzo producers had to handle extreme heat. The drought was significant too. As an example, Catalonia had 45 restrictions for the use of water in agriculture in 2022; while Bierzo had half the average rainfall. However this tasting displayed freshness across all the wines, despite the drought.

Palacios explains that although vines shut down in the heat, there were no dry leaves, and the wines were fresh. Undoubtedly the focus on viticulture and biodynamics over the years has helped here.

Focus on Bierzo

In Bierzo, Pérez Palacios also cited the changes. In 2022, for instance, he harvested his top wine La Faraona, from a single vineyard, before its neighbours Las Llamas and Moncerbal. Yet there have been years when it has been harvested in the snow.

He observes: ‘Mencía is normally round, with subtle tannins, and the acid is more delicate. It’s a delicate variety.’ Yet it was clear in the tasting that the interplay of acid and tannin has become more expressive than it has been in the variety.

Recounting how the Bierzo wines began, Palacios remembered with an air of amused frustration that his nephew ‘was supposed to be going to do a stage at Romanée-Conti’. Instead he had come back from his studies in France with bottles from Bierzo. ‘He insisted – we have to go to Bierzo and do this.’

Continuing to innovate

Palacios was Decanter’s Man of the Year 2015, the award for those already at the top of their profession. He could be forgiven for slowing down. Yet he hasn’t stopped, extending vineyard holdings, grafting over vines with different varieties, establishing Quiñón de Valmira as his finest Garnacha in the formerly under-rated zone of Rioja Oriental.

The latter has been a long task. Originally, he says, the vineyard was 85% Tempranillo – now it’s 85% Garnacha. Next year he’s planting in Rioja at 700m. Meanwhile in Priorat he has played a significant role in driving the establishment of quality categories in the region, from village wines up through the single-vineyard category to gran vinya classificada (effectively grand cru).

L’Ermita was one of the founding trio in this top gran vinya classificada category. The others were Mas Doix Tossal d’en Bou and Vall Llach Mas de la Rosa. Les Aubaguetes is also now a gran vinya classificada.

Pérez Palacios has been involved in driving the same categorisation in Bierzo. Las Lamas and La Faraona are both in the gran vinya classificada category. In Rioja, which is so much larger and with so many competing interests, it has been much less easy to introduce a classification of this kind. However Palacios has signed up to the viñedo singular category for Quiñón de Valmira.

Sarah Jane Evans MW rates the Alvaro Palacios 2022 new releases

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