Professional reviews
Robert Parker (98)
Their Gran Reserva style red 2015 Peñas Aladas Gran Reserva had a very long aging in barrel, a total of 54 months, including six months of malolactic fermentation. This comes from a myriad of small plots of some of the oldest vines in the village of La Aguilera in the same zone that names the wine, at 870 to 890 meters in altitude. The valley receives very cold winds from the Duero River, and the vineyards are surrounded by junipers, pines and oak trees, which makes it up to three degrees Celsius lower than the rest of the village, one of the coldest places in the whole of Ribera del Duero. The soils have a layer of sand that is gradually mixed with clay until around one meter deep, and then there's a layer of marl and limestone, a textbook soil for the vine. 2015 was a powerful vintage, and there was some frost that also delivered a little more concentration. The wine has an old Ribera del Duero style, with some rusticity and lots of power, energy and concentration but with great balance. It has plenty of fine tannins and lots of chalkiness. This should be very long lived. 2,223 bottles and 41 magnums were hand bottled unfiltered and unfined in May 2020.
There is a gradual increase of volume in the village reds, as they have more than enough old vineyards to bottle more wine and sell fewer grapes. They have been in their new winery since 2018 where they have more room to work. I tasted wines from different vintages, as they sell the Gran Reserva five to six years after the harvest and the younger wines a couple of years after the vintage, which means there are wines from cool (2016 and 2018) and warmer years (2015, 2017 and 2019) with different profiles. 2017 was marked by spring frost and yields were lower, but still they managed to produce very good wines from the more challenging year.
Peñin (97)
Colour: cherry, garnet rim;Aroma: complex, spicy, black fruit, raspberry, scrubland, balsamic herbs, floral;Flavour: flavourful, round tannins, great length, elegant;
