Villa de Corullón

Tasted as a barrel sample, the village 2023 Corullón produced with a selection of 90 plots from the 200+ that they own in the village drove me crazy. It has a stony, quite Moncerbal-ish (according to Ricardo), serious, austere and a little reductive character, with a flinty and elegant reduction that I love. The vines have been worked organically and biodynamically since they started in 1999 and achieved organic certification in 2018. The vines are very balanced, and they have learned to manage the warm years much better than in the past (in 2017, they were a lot less ready than today). 2023 was still a warm year, even if the wines, like this Corullón, have a profile that makes you think of a classical year in Bierzo from 20 years ago. It makes me think of the 2001 that I've always liked very much, among my favorite years ever. The final blend has not yet been mastered, but they have more wine...

The bottled village red 2022 Corullón was produced with grapes from around 90 different plots and had a short élevage of eight months in barrel. It is 93% Mencía, 4% Jerez (Palomino), 2.5% Alicante Bouschet and 0.5% Gran Negro bottled at 13.5% alcohol. It's floral and aromatic, but compared with the more-austere 2023, it comes through as more generous, riper and a little gentler, with more fruit but with elegance and freshness that nobody expected during the torrid summer and harvest. It keeps the freshness and poise, with fine-grained tannins. 25,392 bottles and some smaller and larger formats produced. It was bottled in August and November 2023, as they had to stop for the harvest.

The vino de villa village red 2021 Corullón is extremely floral and elegant, clean, precise, fresh and very complete and harmonious, with a super elegant mouthfeel and a very long finish. 19,716 bottles and some smaller and larger formats produced. It was bottled in January 2022. This is super balanced and is aging slowly, with potential to age much more.

I was blown away by the 2020 wines in barrel in June 2021 and found the 2020 Villa de Corullón very ready, open, expressive, floral and ethereal. It destroyed the idea I had of a warm and ripe 2020. Ricardo Pérez Palacios told me he was thinking of bottling the 2020s earlier, as they didn't need a long élevage, just nine or 10 months in barrel. The wine is pale, the palest Corullón ever, with 13.7% alcohol—perhaps the vines got blocked and didn't develop more color compounds or sugar. The wine makes me think of a red from Jura; it has a different profile and is more delicate, ethereal and full of light and energy. Pérez, who hates comparisons with other regions, couldn't stop saying that it felt like a Morey Saint Denis! It's all flowers and red fruit, with lot of super fine tannins (the 2019 tannins are rougher) that are round and give it a velvety texture with no rusticity—elegant and balanced. There is a nice balance between tannin and acidity, something this has in common with the 2019, which makes the vintages quite unusual, because being warm, the wines show balance. Today it feels more like Moncerbal than the Moncerbal bottling; nevertheless, Corullón is around 40% from Moncerbal... It has to be my favorite Corullón to date. 22,183 bottles and some larger formats produced. It was bottled in October 2021.

The village wine 2018 Corullón has, for the first time, the new category Vino de Villa (village wine!). It comes from around 90 plots of their own vineyards. In the cooler and more Atlantic 2018, they had more rain than the previous two vintages and a lower average temperature, and they think it was excellent for their wines ("a modern version of 2001," Ricardo Pérez Palacios told me). There are around 8% white grapes here, and the wine fermented in oak vats with punching down, and the élevage was in a combination of barriques, bocoyes and foudres, oak containers of different sizes, and was short of 11 months. This is the modern version of 2001 and 2012, and in 2018, it has the part of Moncerbal (almost 40%) that was not in the 2017 (because of hail, the Moncerbal bottling was not produced in 2017), so it goes back to the classical style. There is terrific balance here, great purity, with the essence of slate; here, we move from the fruit of the Pétalos to the herbs. But there is complexity and nuance, violets, rockrose, sap, resin, fern, cinnamon and citrus, all very subtle and harmonious. The flavors have similar purity, and if these wines never have high acidity, there is great freshness, soft citrus, all very subtle and velvety. This is sooo easy to drink it could be dangerous... They produced 23,034 bottles and other formats, half-bottles, magnums, double magnums and jeroboams. It was bottled in January 2020.

Purplish mid crimson. High-toned, sweet, minerally nose and then salty-sweet fruit on the palate. There's a suggestion of sweet malted milk. Jewelly and flattering. Lots of life here, but some palates may find it just a bit too sweet. I must say I find the La Montesa Rioja fresher.

Fragrant nose of loganberries, wild raspberries, lemon zest, walnuts, bark, violets and dried spices. Medium-bodied with firm, silky tannins. Elegant and precise. Tight, mineral finish. Better from 2022.