CRITIC REVIEWS
Luis Gutiérrez
The 2017 Numanthia represents a blend of their terroirs selected from over 100 plots of ungrafted vines, and it fermented with commercial yeasts and matured in 225- and 400-liter French oak barrels, 60% of them new, for 18 months. They lost 30% of the crop to frost, and then it was warm and dry and the grapes ripened thoroughly. They made an effort to remove all the raisins and did a softer vinification to moderate the extraction. Its ripe at 15.5% alcohol and has a pH of 3.79 and is quite harmonious, big and rich but with no excess and with integrated oak. 76,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in June 2019.
Tamlyn Currin
The contrast between the 2017 and the 2016 is clear, even if I did taste the 2016 out of a small, decanted sample tube. 2017 was a hotter year, but the tannins have changed, the freshness is more to the fore, the alcohol is a lot less noticeable. Deep, wild blackberry fruit, indigo inkiness, lavender and black olives. Elderberries. Mushrooms dried fried with fresh rosemary and thyme. Theres a sooty smudge to the velvet of the tannins, dense but not thick-set, not as implacable. The length of the finish carries a sense of spice and windswept herbs, but doesnt lose the sweetness and purity of the dark, glossy fruit. The wine is far less monolithic than the 2016. It has lilt instead of punch, a capella harmony instead of a blast of concentration. I can hear the vineyards more clearly, in the 2017, than I could in the 2016. If this is the direction Numanthia is heading in, I can only say that Im watching with a sense of excitement. (TC)