This wine seems too good to be true, until you consider where it comes from. Upon tasting it, you’ll wonder how a wine of such immense concentration can also possess such elegance and lift.
Only when you consider its source vineyard does it start to make sense: The Sastre family’s “Pago de Santa Cruz” sits at 800+ meters’ elevation on the high plateau that is the Ribera del Duero. Intense luminosity combined with dramatic, desert-like day/night temperature swings enable Jesús Sastre to achieve maximum ripeness without losing the balancing acidity that makes today’s 2012 so special. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the 75+-year-old vines in the site have learned to self-regulate, but even with all these natural advantages, Sastre doesn’t produce a longer-aged Gran Reserva version of this wine unless vintage conditions are perfect. Like a lot of the best Gran Reservas, whether from Ribera del Duero or further north in Rioja, this wine already spent a lot of time in barrel and bottle before we got our hands on it, so it has a fully-formed feel to it, not to mention the luxurious gloss and polish that characterizes the many high-wattage labels in this region (like the iconic Vega Sicilia). Bordering Alejandro Fernandez’s Condado de Haza in the village of La Horra, Pago de Santa Cruz is a Ribera del Duero Grand Cru—but like a lot of wines of its ilk, its production is minuscule (about 3,000 bottles total). We can offer up to four bottles per person today, bottles that should be jealously hoarded: This wine eclipses many top-tier Bordeaux costing twice as much!
The Sastres go back at least three generations in La Horra: Jesús’s grandfather was one of the founding members of a local winemaking cooperative, and his father, Rafael, founded the family winery in 1992 (before they started their own label, the family sold fruit to Vega Sicilia, among others). Jesús Sastre and his brother, Pedro, worked side-by-side until Pedro was killed in a car wreck in 2002, leaving Jesús in charge of the estates 47 hectares of vineyards in La Horra and nearby Roa. Although he has not sought official certification, Sastre has farmed organically and biodynamically since Viña Sastre’s creation; he’s sitting on a treasure trove of old, bush-trained vines that are essentially family heirlooms, especially “Pago de Santa Cruz,” which perches on a ridge with multiple exposures in soils of limestone and rust-colored clay.
One of the big markers sommeliers look for when attempting to identify Ribera del Duero wines “blind” is evidence that the wine aged in American oak barrels, which tend to impart notes of coconut and dill to the wine (especially when new barrels are used). Overall, a lot of the discussion about Ribera del Duero wine has focused on oak, which I think is unfortunate: Not only have a lot of producers opted to load their wines up with new oak, but the specialness of the Ribera del Duero terroir is being overlooked. While Pago de Santa Cruz has all the oak-aged polish of a luxury-tier wine, it’s the magical combination of richness and finesse that had us re-assessing the region—it is the home of Vega Sicilia, after all, which this wine pays homage to with its crushed-velvet texture and saturated fruit.
Crafted from 100% Tempranillo (called Tinto Fino or Tinta del País in Ribera del Duero), today’s Gran Reserva was aged 30 months in mostly used oak barrels—a combination of one- to three-year-old French (65%) and American (35%) barrels ranging in size from 225 liters to 1,000. It has a dark ruby-garnet hue in the glass, with a broad range of aromas that emerge as the wine takes on air: scents of black currant, kirsch, cassis, anise, lavender, tobacco, mocha, espresso grounds, and baking spices carry over to the full-bodied palate, which has a very compact, focused feel. The substantial time in oak is still evident but it is beginning to integrate in a wine that still has a good 15-20 years of delicious evolution ahead of it. I can’t stress enough how balanced and elegant this wine is, because frankly, there are a lot of blocky, one-dimensional behemoths coming out of Ribera del Duero these days. This is the antidote—silky and rich but quite lifted and energetic as well. Decant it at least 45 minutes before serving in Bordeaux stems at 60 degrees, and don’t be shy with the pairing: beef, lamb, or gamier meats like venison are all in play. Enjoy!
