Producer profile: Aalto
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In less than 16 years, Javier Zaccagnini and Mariano Garcia have achieved their aim – to make a wine in Ribera del Duero equal to the world’s best. Sarah Jane Evans MW meets the duo and discovers the secrets of their success
Five of the best from Zaccagnini & Garcia
Aalto, PS 2004
18.5/20pts (95/100pts)
Fascinating insight into ageability of PS (Pagos Seleccionadas) in a very good year. Gloriously aromatic, floral, and black fruits. Bright, fresh, complex, with a clean, mineral edge. Still so young, a sign of the potential of Ribera del Duero.
Price: £80 (in bond) City Wine Collection, Turville Valley Wines
Drink 2015- 2025
Alc 15%
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Sei Solo 2012
18.5/20pts (95/100pts)
Glorious mineral elegance. A big wine with a warm alcohol depth. Intense dark fruit with a long, finely textured, intense finish.
Price: £36.66 (ib) Justerini & Brooks
Drink 2016-2024
Alc 15%
Aalto, PS 2011
18/20pts (93/100pts)
A vividly powerful Ribera del Duero, showing what this region is capable of using old vines, and thick-skinned Tinto Fino. Dense and spicy, with black fruits, and liquorice and fennel complexity. Oak gives fine smokiness. Flinty, mineral finish.
Price: £49-£89.60 Christopher Keiller, Fine & Rare, Hedonism, Justerini & Brooks
Drink 2018- 2030
Alc 15%
Aalto 2011
17/20pts (90/100pts)
Spicy, glossy Tinto Fino, showing a fine-tuned midpalate, with some slightly drying, dusty tannins. An enticing richness of quality fruit (suggesting sweet blueberries) with a savoury seasoning. The oak is a feature, but the quality is fine and balances the richness. Very big with a warm ripple of alcohol. 50% new oak – 85% French oak and 15% American.
Price: £49-£89.60 Christopher Keiller, Fine & Rare, Hedonism, Justerini & Brooks
Drink 2015-2020
Alc 15%
Sei Solo, Preludio 2012
17/20pts (90/100pts)
Boldly aromatic with black fruits, fine leather and liquorice. Signs of fine oak barrels lead the palate. Dense, excellent fruit matched by spicy palate. Four-square structure. Fermented in small oak vats in a corner of the winery and aged in oak barrels for 18 months. A very promising beginning to the project.
Price: £16.67 (ib) Justerini & Brooks
Drink 2018-2020
Alc 15%
Sarah Jane Evans MW is an award-winning journalist who began writing about wine (and food, restaurants, and chocolate) in the 1980s. She started drinking Spanish wine - Sherry, to be specific - as a student of classics and social and political sciences at Cambridge University. This started her lifelong love affair with the country’s wines, food and culture, leading to her appointment as a member of the Gran Orden de Caballeros de Vino for services to Spanish wine. In 2006 she became a Master of Wine, writing her dissertation on Sherry and winning the Robert Mondavi Winery Award. Currently vice-chairman of the Institute of Masters of Wine, Evans divides her time between contributing to leading wine magazines and reference books, wine education and judging wines internationally.