Fuente Grulla 2019

The second vintage of the single-vineyard Rufete from the village of Molinillo, the 2019 Fuente Grulla comes from a plot cultivated by Tomás Hernandez, who owns the vineyard. It's quite spicy, perhaps the effect of the soil, which is rich in "corneana," a metamorphic rock called hornfels or whetstone and tends to give the wine a smoky twist that can sometimes be confused with oak. The soils from the village of Molinillo are darker and tend to give the wines a slightly darker profile. The single-vineyard wines ferment in open-top vats with indigenous yeasts and with a soft vinification to avoid too much extraction to control the tannins from the variety. It matured in used barrique for 15 months. This is rounder and more approachable than the other vineyard-designated wines. Some 1,000 bottles were filled in May 2021. 2019 was a low-yielding year.