Flor de Pingus - Tempranillo

Review

Because of very low yields and a warm and dry season, the 2017 Flor de Pingus was produced from very concentrated grapes with lots of tannin, so they had to do a very soft vinification and an extended élevage, being very careful not to dry out the wine. So, they used less new oak barrels, and the wine was alternatively in barrique and stainless steel, trying to polish the tannins and keep the juiciness and avoid excessive tannins. So, the wine is polished, more than it usually is. It's ripe but without the perfect ripeness of a great vintage. It has character, in a somehow more baroque way. Peter Sisseck compared it to other vintages finished in seven: 1997, 2007. They only produced some 60,000 bottles, when the normal production should have been around 100,000 bottles, which means they lost some 40% of the crop because of the frost. It was bottled in July 2019, later than in other vintages. 93/100 Flor de Pingus

I had a calm and slow tasting of three vintages of the three wines produced by Peter Sisseck, giving the wines time in the glass to open up and express themselves. 2016, 2017 and 2018 are very different vintages. 2016 saw a good crop with lots of freshness, and the wines have great precision and elegance. 2017 was a dry and warm year marked by frost that made them lose between 25% and 40% of their grapes (they could buy other grapes to compensate the volume of PSI). And 2018 was a year with good rains in the winter, a classical year with high yields (the effect of the frost) and a warm summer that resulted in a very good year. The question is still up in the air if 2018 has the magic of a year like 2016 or not, but it's closer in style to 2016.