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Arenisca Paraje Los Pilones 2021

Arenisca Paraje Los Pilones

2021
ORGANIC
Wines without GI (Spain)

£23.95

/ 0.75 L btl
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Spec sheet

TypeRed wine
Region
Grapes
Producer
AllergensContains sulfites
Alcohol contenti14.5%

The wine

Arenisca Paraje los Pilones is an unusually fresh wine, especially bearing in mind the region where its grapes grow. It is less extracted than most DO Toro wines and includes some white grapes cultivated alongside red ones, as happens in many old vineyards. It boasts a smooth and juicy palate with pleasant tannins and a serious finish. The oak is perfectly integrated thanks to the use of different sizes and ages of casks, but remains in the background behind its fresh black fruit and elegant earthy notes. A fleshy but graceful wine, it displays an excellent combination of strength and nimbleness. Arenisca Paraje Los Pilones is a wine that exudes passion and clear thinking, a pure and undisputable interpretation of a land and its fruit by a family in love with winegrowing.

As usual with Cantalapiedra wines, it is made with organically-cultivated grapes from old Tinta de Toro (Tempranillo) vines planted at altitudes of 780 metres in Villabuena del Puente, a small village 20 km from Toro although the wine does not bear the Toro DO label. It is named after the sandy-soil Paraje Los Pilones plot of vines.

It is produced and aged at the Cantalapiedra winery in the small town of La Seca. About 20% of the grapes are fermented with their stems before undergoing a malolactic fermentation with the other 80% of the wine. Finally the wine is aged for almost a year in French oak. It is bottled unfiltered and unclarified without sulphites.

What does this wine taste like?

View
Picota cherry red / Intense
Bouquet
Fruit aromas / Red fruit / Black fruit / Spicy notes / Mineral / Dry stone / Mountain herbs / Lactic notes
Mouth
Smooth / Juicy / Rounded tannins / Well-integrated wood / Structured / Good acidity

Ratings and awards

202092+ PK
201992 PK
201892 PK92 PN
201791 PK92 PN
PK: ParkerPN: Peñín

Wine critics reviewsReviews by Parker

The entry-level red 2020 Arenisca comes from vineyards in Toro on sandy soils with a limestone mother rock. It fermented destemmed in open-top tanks with indigenous yeasts and matured in used French oak barrels of different sizes. In Toro, 2020 was quite healthy (especially compared with Rueda), and they got good yields, higher than in 2019 and the wine is more fluid despite being powerful. The wine achieved 14.9% alcohol and has good freshness and acidity. There's power and rusticity, the Toro character, but there's also freshness and a certain elegance, with a profile quite different from the wines from nowadays in the zone. In 2020, he destemmed everything and did a soft vinification, an infusion, a short-ish maceration to avoid excessive extraction. The oak is neatly integrated, and the wine is aromatic and expressive, very pleasant to drink. 12,300 bottles produced. It was bottled in August 2021.

— Luis Gutiérrez (31/01/2023)Robert Parker Wine Advocate Vintage 2020 - 92+ PARKER

Customer reviews

4.4/5
10 reviews
Vintage:

Winemaking

Ageing period11 months
Barrel ageUsed
Type of woodFrench oak
Clarification and filtrationBottled unfined and unfiltered

Vineyards

Paraje Los Pilones

Vine age30 years
SoilSand / Clay
ClimateContinental

The winery

Isaac Cantalapiedra

Isaac Cantalapiedra

Manuel Cantalapiedra, son of Isaac Cantalapiedra, works as the oenologist for the family winery in La Seca (Valladolid). It was founded back in 1949 when Heliodoro, the grandfather, first planted his own vineyard. Ever since then, the passion for the land and organic agriculture expressed by generations of the family, have led to the production of wines with an unusual level of expressiveness for this region. Wines which express much more than the Verdejo grapes usually do, or...

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