Description

Wine Advocate: 93 points
I tasted two vintages of their flagship and eponymous wine, starting with the 2017 San Román, from one of the driest years of the decade, resulting in a very early harvest that started in late August in San Román de Hornija. This comes from a selection of over 40-year-old ungrafted and head-pruned vines on stony soils with clay and limestone in different villages of the appellation. It fermented in stainless steel with indigenous yeasts and matured in 225- and 500-liter French and (30%) American oak barrels for 24 months. There was no frost in 2017 in their zone of Toro; despite the warm year, they had rain during the harvest that slowed things down, and the wines are perhaps lighter than 2018. It's not a warm or classical vintage, at least for San Román. It's approachable and has abundant but fine tannins, polished, quite unusual, more elegant than powerful. All these wines feel quite oaky when young, so if you don't want them like that, you should give them a few year in bottle.