Tasting Notes

WS93

This red is luscious, refined and muscular, showing good cut to the creamy, well-spiced flavors. An intense midpalate of cocoa powder carries through to the finish, which features accents of hoisin sauce and plum pudding.

WA92

The 2010 Reserva Old Vines is Crasto’s familiar old vines bottling (70 years of age on average), tank fermented and then aged for 16 months in a mixture of French (85%) and American (15%) oak. This is, not to sound like a broken record, another nice example of Crasto’s success in this vintage. If this is not quite as sexy and intense as the 2009 – which will no doubt win the blind tastings – it is quite lovely, focused, elegant and juicy, with fine depth for the level and the vintage and a lingering finish. It has some restraint this year, but it shows beautiful harmony and finesse, while still retaining a real backbone. Its texture is caressing. It is a good example of what I’ve said elsewhere – if you didn’t know this was a difficult vintage, no questions would be asked about this. If it has one early flaw, it is that the oak is far too prominent. Based on track record, it should pull that together well with cellaring. As confirmation, while playing with it for a few hours I saw it begin to integrate its oak. Let it settle down a bit. There were 79,000 bottles produced. Drink 2014-2024.

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