Daniel Gomez Jimenez-Landi Las Iruelas 2018 / 750 ml.

Always a wine of incredible lightness and energy, the 2018 Las Iruelas excels in a year like 2018. It is delicate and floral and comes from a relatively large 1.1-hectare vineyard in the valley that names the wine, in the village of El Tiemblo in the province of Ávila in the Gredos wine region. It’s a very steep slope that faces east and gets the morning sun, but it is protected by the mountain from the afternoon sun. The soil is quite unique, as it contains a mixture of granite and schist, laminated and with vertical veins that allow the roots to go very deep. The soils are very shallow, barely 20 centimeters and are rich in sand, quartz and silt. The climate is also quite unique — it gets abundant rains since it’s located in a place where storms get trapped between the Tiétar and Alberche Valleys. The bunches are painstakingly cleaned, and every grape that is less than perfect is removed before they are put into oak vats to ferment with the natural yeasts, with a soft vinification and an infusion of very long macerations. The wine matured in a 1,400-liter oak vat for 12 months. This is ethereal, transparent, aromatic and nuanced, with incredible energy but with a silky mouthfeel that makes it feel light but has amazing inner power! It has to be the most elegant vintage of Iruelas. 1,785 bottles were filled in March 2020.