Ressons Clot de la Vella

A few months ago, in our monthly selection for February, we introduced you to a newly-created winery, Mas d'en Canonge, in the Montsant denomination, offering some particularly mineral, juicy, approachable and affordable wines, and we gave you advance notice of the arrival of a new wine, which we had already had the chance to taste in barrel. This is the one: Ressons Clot de la Vella 2009. It’s an old vine Garnacha single varietal, appearing in its first vintage. It is the winery’s pride and joy and brims with personality: its fine character becomes apparent on simply uncorking the bottle; it has just been released from the cellar and requires a bit of time and aeration, but its complexity will not be slow in coming through.

Its primary aromas, warm and leather-noted, will captivate Bordeaux wine lovers; its notes of oak ageing, in the background as it opens up but clearly present with an immediate impact, will satisfy those who like their wines intense; its fruitiness, its expansive aromas (Indian ink, black fruit patiently ripened, resinous hints) and its powerfulness will win over everyone else. It is an accessible wine, like all those produced by this winery, but a wine to figure among ones of great quality.

Ressons Clot de la Vella conveys the powerfulness of those old Garnacha vineyards and, should it be possible to stop sniffing wafts from the glass, there is a balanced, sweet-tasting wine to be enjoyed on the palate: ripe fruit, black fruit, a wine with volume and body, sweetish, balanced, pleasant, and with an aftertaste of tertiary aromas (leather and earthy notes). Undoubtedly, the older sibling of that Ressons which we liked enormously, yet even so a wine for the general consumer. Its first vintage has aroused our interest and made us very curious to learn about its evolution and the new vintages.