Wine Advisor
Aalto, Ribera del Duero 2009
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Description
Tasting notes
Reviewed by: Neal Martin
The 2009 Aalto has a rich decadent, floral bouquet with licorice-tinged dark berries with earthy, almost peaty aromas underneath the carapace of fruit. The palate is full-bodied with dense tannins, but good acidity and very fine harmony and focus. There are hints of star anis toward the multi-layered finish that possesses great length. Superb. Drink 2018-2030. I made a brief but profitable visit to the splendid Aalto winery, the joint venture between ex-Vega Sicilia winemaker Mariano Garcia and Javier Zaccagnini. The impressive, modern-looking facility in which they first vinified the 2005 vintage is incomplete, at least in terms of non-essential accoutrements such as a car park or a tasting room. Javier told me that the five-story winery is based entirely on gravity transfer and is equipped with tools to make the best wine possible. They intend to add the less essential “frills” to the winery once they have repaid the loan, which is soon, apparently. Early vintages from 2000 came from outsourced fruit, though now their wine is sourced entirely from their own plots from several villages (around 110 in total). A tasting of individual lots of the nascent 2011 demonstrated their heterogeneity and so Aalto is a masterclass in the art of blending as much as terroir expression. The “PS” is only produced in the finest vintages from the best plots, which Javier analogized to picking the best players for the Spanish football team. Some older vintages were kindly opened for me as a reference point, although frankly speaking, I felt that they were denuded of the quality of recent vintages since they had to suffice with out-sourced fruit that was vinified in a rented winery back in those early days. Importer: Eric Solomon, European Cellars, Charlotte, NC; tel. (704) 358-1565
About the Producer
The AALTO project was founded in February 1999, in the prestigious winemaking region of Ribera del Duero (Spain). The foundational aim of Mariano Garcia and Javier Zaccagnini in AALTO was to make a wine that shows a different personality, of high quality and being a faithful reflection of distinct locations, blending them at the end of the aging process to obtain balance and complexity. A few years later, in 2006, Masaveu and Nozaleda families joined AALTO, both owners of wineries in other wine regions of Spain, providing experience and stability to the project, which meant the consolidation of the winery to this day. The architecture of the winery is perfectly integrated into the environment, in a typical Ribera del Duero plateau, with a lineal and harmonic design without ostentation, and minimalistic details, elegant and comfortable.
