Cérvoles 2020

There are some wines whose elegance you can already sense by intuition before opening the bottle. In this case, a tall and slender bottle with a black label and simple design heralds a wine for special occasions. And that’s exactly what it is. Dressed just right, Cérvoles exhibits a bright dark cherry colour with a rim that is starting to evolve but which still retains its lively ruby-red shade. Tears slowly emerge, leading us to expect a dense, full-bodied wine. First appearances over, Cérvoles offers us a primary aroma on the nose of black fruit, ripe plums and blackberry jam, but before we can ponder whether maturity might be leading to rather weighty aromas, and especially on swirling the wine glass, up comes a balsamic background that will continue coming through, and be complemented by some spicy notes denoting pepper and fine woods (cedar). A lovely complex ensemble which becomes increasingly exuberant. We recommend that you open the bottle at least an hour beforehand and let the wine open up in the glass, and it’s like an ‘in crescendo’ movement in music - pleasurable, intense and lively. Definitely, Cérvoles is a wine to take time over, a wine for relaxing moments and one we would recommend for special dinners, as an accompaniment to delicacies. We resist taking a sip because with time in the wine glass new notes have appeared: perhaps stony ground, maybe pine groves, or black olives. This is undoubtedly a Mediterranean wine, juicy and very voluptuous, seductive. After that utter density, hints of liquorice are evident too. A lively, expressive nose, that we can’t grow tired of smelling and which gives us twice as much pleasure when eventually we move on to tasting: that refinement on the nose, that complexity is multiplied on the palate, as long as we’ve allowed the wine to open up enough. Its entry is voluminous, very intense, and the fruit is so ripe you can almost chew it. Intensity, with elegance and balance. Although sweetness wasn’t noticed on the nose, it is sweet and rich on the palate, with some very notable, ripe tannins and generous acidity that confirm it still has a lot of life ahead. As for now, it is exceptionally enjoyable. There are no new twists on the finish, “simply” a ‘decrescendo’, with that roundness slowly fading away.