Bodegas Vizcarra Ramos Roble Senda del Oro 2020

James Suckling, 92 pts

"Dark cherries, blueberries, dried herbs, smoke, cracked pepper and baking spices on the nose. Full-bodied with chewy tannins. Dark, chalky and smoky on the palate with a supple finish. Drink or hold".

Juan Carlos Vizcarra is a man of intensity, passion, and incredible ambition. Though his family has grown grapes in northern DO Ribera del Duero for more than four generations, he was the first to make estate-bottled wine from this fruit starting in 1991. The story goes that when he was a boy, he noticed that the historic estates of Vega Sicilia and Pesquera would come to his family in bad vintages to buy fruit. Realizing that his family must have truly special vineyards of the highest quality, Juan Carlos took it upon himself to begin producing wines to express this blessed terroir and heritage. Like all the wines at the tiny Bodegas Vizcarra, the Senda del Oro is made using gravity-fed winemaking to preserve the freshness and elegance intrinsic to the limestone plots found in northern Burgos. The name refers to the “golden mile,” a local road stretching between the famed estates in the appellation. Meticulous in everything he does, Juan Carlos applies his detail-oriented approach to every facet of the winemaking process. With painstaking attention paid to every detail from vineyard to bottle, Juan Carlos is able to express the elegance and freshness intrinsic to this special land he farms by hand, without the use of chemicals. Oak is used as a framer of the fruit in a supporting role, and the result is a confluence of power and freshness that positions his wines among the greats of the appellation. While Senda del Oro is Vizcarra’s entry-level wine, the exacting nature of the regimen is the same as his flagship wines, and exhibits world class Ribera quality