2005 Frontaura Toro Crianza (Tempranillo)

Saturday Pickup REMINDER: We will have bonus pickup hours for TPU members on Saturday November 22, from 10am-2pm. As an extra treat, Ben Smith will be joining us to pour Cadence wines, a combination of current release and (woohoo!) library wines. List members and their invited guests are welcome, but please note: we expect it to be a *very* busy day, so please do e-mail us if you’re planning to come in.
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Hello friends. The fourth quarter of the year is a crazy time in the wine trade. The deals fly fast and furious, and I’m doing my best to keep up with them, taste a bunch of wine, and select the best values on behalf of our list members.

Spanish wines tend to be pretty strong values to begin with, and so when there are deals to be made in Spain, I pay very close attention. Last week, we were offered a terrific tariff on a Spanish Tempranillo that’s a decade past vintage, one that began its life at a $40 price point. The deal was: if we took the entire remaining parcel in Seattle, we could offer it at a TPU price well off that release tag, and a good bit below the lowest published price nationally:

Toro has a long history of winemaking (dating back to the 11th century) but has only been a DO (Denominación de Origen) since 1987. The region has been seeing a ton of investment by Rioja and Ribera del Duero wineries, as land prices are considerably lower than in those two well-established regions. It’s not so different from all the California money currently flowing into Washington.

Luis Gutierrez had a terrific write-up of the region for Wine Advocate this summer, and his pictures were even better. This one shows perfectly how Toro is right in the middle of a change towards modernity, with old head-pruned bush vines on the left, and modern trellised vines on the right. And this one shows how remarkably rocky some of the soils of the region are. Frontaura’s vineyards sit on rocky alluvial soils, at more than 2000’ elevation, and they’re planted almost entirely to Tempranillo.

It seems like every region in Spain has its own name for Tempranillo, and that’s the case in Toro, where it’s called (creatively) Tinta de Toro. This bottling from Frontaura is Crianza. In Toro that means it has to be aged for at least 24 months, of which 6 months must be in barrel. Frontaura has gone well beyond that, keeping it in barrel for 15 months, and then of course it has been in bottle for years and years. And more years.

The nose shows off all that bottle age, with a wonderful mix of primary and tertiary aromas. There is cedar and mushroom, smoky cherry and tobacco leaf, and subtle spice notes (the winery uses all French oak, not the American used traditionally in Rioja, so you’ll find no dill or coconut notes here). On the palate, this is in a lovely drinking window right now, rich and savory, leafy and crepuscular. While the tannins are integrating nicely, this still possesses a certain rustic charm, a finishing chew that makes me think it still has years of life ahead of it. The balance of earth and fruit is just right, and this is a bottle to remind us that there is just no place in the world like Spain for tasting mature wines in the peak of their drinking windows, especially at such accessible price points.

Please limit order requests to 12 bottles, and we’ll do our best to fulfill all requests. The wine is in the warehouse and ready for immediate pickup or shipping during the next temperature-appropriate shipping window.