I love the wines from Bodegas Arrocal, as their vines are in the higher altitude village of Gumiel de Mercado, where diurnal temperature swings produce more refined wines than in much hotter sections of Ribera de Duero, such as around Valladolid. The 2021 Tinto Fino from Bodegas Arrocal is crafted solely from tempranillo, with the organically farmed vines between twenty and twenty-five years of age. The wine is raised in three-year-old French and American oak barrels for ten months prior to bottling, with the 2021 version coming in at an even fourteen percent. The wine’s bouquet is lovely, wafting from the glass in a mix of black cherries, dark berries, cigar wrapper, a touch of clove, woodsmoke, dark soil tones and a nice light touch of cedary oak from the older casks. On the palate the wine is bright, full-bodied, focused and complex, with a good core of ripe fruit, fine soil signature, ripe, chewy tannins and a long, vibrant and nascently complex finish. This is a young wine and will demand some bottle age to soften up its backend tannin, but it is going to be excellent and is an extraordinary value! 2029-2065. John Gilman -