Tinta de Toro Triton 2022, Bodegas Vatan

Tasting notes

This wine is rich and fruity with flavors of fine spices, blackberries and cocoa powder. It is characterized by its smooth, integrated tannin as well as its long and elegant finish. A quintessential Toro red!

Pairing Ideas

Hearty and flavorful foods such as steak, lambchops, mexican food and especially BBQ. This bold powerful wine wants bold, powerful food to accompany it.

Terroir

Extremely poor sandy soils with a thin eight-inch layer of red clay ten feet below the surface, crucial for water retention. The 2,400ft altitude is responsible for phenomenal temperature swings between day and night, and the climate combined with the sandy soil create a terroir that is responsible for a elegantly powerful, mineral expression of Tinta de Toro.

Vine age

Vineyards planted between 1915 and 1962.

Vinification

• Hand harvested in mid October
• Primary fermentation of whole berries in stainless steel using indigenous yeasts
• Aged eight months in second- through fifth-use French oak barriques (225L), puncheons (500L), and demi-muids (600L).
  

About the Winery

Hailing from the Toro Denomination of Origin (DO) in Spain, this is the only DO that was completely resistant to the phylloxera plague (a tiny aphid-like insect that destroyed most of the vineyards in Europe in the 19th century). The indigenous grape is Tinta de Toro, Spain’s original clone of Tempranillo. Toro was Spain’s most famous medieval winemaking region, and its wines accompanied Spanish explorers to the New World. The wines of Toro were even mentioned in the literature of Cervantes, Gongora, and Quevedo. Bodegas Vatan is part of the Grupo Jorge Ordoñez, who is accredited with the resuscitation of this grape variety in 1998.

Founded in 2004, Grupo Jorge Ordóñez is a select group of eight wineries that produce wines from grapes grown in thirteen different denominations of origin across Spain. All of the wineries are owned and operated by Jorge Ordóñez. Nacho Álvarez is the Technical Director and Head Winemaker for the Grupo. The philosophy of this project is the production of artisan wines from the oldest vineyards of Spain’s indigenous grapes. All of the vineyards are head-trained, dry farmed, and cared for with the most traditional means of viticulture. The wines are the ultimate representation of fine wine from the oldest clones of indigenous Spanish grape varieties.