From Romanée-Conti to Raúl Pérez:
new vintage of Cobrana just arrived!
Each year, we eagerly await the new red wines from Verónica Ortega.
Our smallest bodega in Bierzo – but what Verónica produces is among the region's finest. No surprise: she trained with the greatest in the world: Romanée-Conti and Raúl Pérez.
Last winter, her top white wine La Tormenta 2022 sold out in a flash (my favourite Godello, by the way…). She joined our Spring Tasting and promised me a small extra allocation of this sold-out wine. So we secured an additional 60 bottles – delivered together with her top reds!
But enough about white!
This weekend, it’s all about Verónica’s reds:
These wines show a Burgundian character: lighter in colour, delicate in structure and pure elegance.
This is a field blend from a small parcel at 700m altitude. The terroir is entirely blue slate with clay, helping preserve acidity – even in warm years like 2022. Just look at what Gutiérrez wrote for R. Parker:
"Verónica Ortega has managed an impressive collection from the challenging, super warm and dry 2022 vintage, with wines that keep the elegance and freshness."
Only the truly great can pull that off.
R. Parker awarded this 2022 a top score of 95/100!
The
village red 2022 Cobrana shows a little more ripeness than the previous
vintage but still keeps its poise, elegance and balance with a juicy
palate and round tannins. It has very tasty flavors, contained ripeness
and 13% alcohol. The grapes were picked on September 10, early for the
cooler zone, fermented with full clusters in open 5,000-liter oak vats
with indigenous yeasts and matured in clay amphorae and barriques for 12
months. 7,750 bottles produced.
Verónica
Ortega has managed an impressive collection from the challenging, super
warm and dry 2022 vintage, with wines that keep the elegance and
freshness. She told me that "the result of the wines of the vintage is
very surprising. During the harvest, the musts lacked acidity. A vintage
with a lot of extract, ripe skins and, at the same time, without good
ripeness, the panorama had us discouraged, especially for the Mencía in
Valtuille. Not so much the Godello, which we managed to harvest with
parameters of a normal vintage, or the Mencía in Cobrana, which also
maintained its parameters, ripened earlier than other years but that
enjoyed balance in the mouth and intensity of flavors. But the magic was
done once the wines finished malolactic, and an unexpected freshness
began to awaken lively fruit, with vibrant energy... once again, the
great terroir prevails, which allows the old vineyards to produce wines
of incredible balance, even in difficult vintages like this one." Some
of the reds had been bottled very recently and won't be released until
the end of the year, and despite her fear, the wines showed balance and
harmony."
Take this opportunity to stock this Burgundian-style red in your cellar