Villa de Corullón 2022

If Pétalos is the regional wine, in which the Bierzo's different personalities are brought together, Corullón is the local wine, from the small town of Villa de Corullón. It is a wine distinguished by its powerfulness, the intensity of the slate soils and the vigour of the old vineyards, aged between 60 and 100 years old; and likewise, by the elegance of its velvety texture. Summary of Ricardo P. Palacios' evaluation of the 2015 vintage The 2015 vintage has seen a dry year with a rainy harvest, which has resulted in a rare yet lovely balance. In fact, it has been the driest year in the last fifty in Corullón, with spring and summer being especially low in rainfall, but with constant moderate temperatures which over time speeded up the vegetative cycle by almost two weeks. Only the arrival of harvest-time offset this lack of moisture with showers that added up to a third of the year's rainfall, reaching as much as 100 litres in the middle of September. A spring and summer with a continental profile, that's for sure, and a damp harvest typical of an Atlantic climate. Notwithstanding these weather conditions, owing to the fact that the Mencía variety has a short vegetative cycle which also accelerates the ripening process in the final stage, the earliest areas ripen at the same time every year; it's only at the highest levels that they can be delayed by even a month, as was the case with La Faraona. As often happens in dry years, the dryness of 2015 didn't bring forward the start of the harvest (September 5th), but it did concentrate it into fewer days (only 23 days, when the norm for years with damper harvests can be up to 2 months). The wines still maintain the fresh Atlantic character of the two previous vintages and seem to pick up both the aroma of grapes well-ripened in the sun and the freshness of the damp harvest. Delicate, very aromatic and with fluid, silky tannins.