Chocolate coffee brett climb the mint ladder into a kalamata bowl, oily and salty, making green skid-marks across the wet pewter top of heavily-oiled black walnut with crushed velvet cushions. Eye-openenly vibrant in the mouth, stunning bitter fruit strides full-abreast with a magnifcient streak of acid and clawing tannins still looking for a place to hide. The fruit is all tree and ranch and farm-stand fresh–there’s no dessert here. The fact that it has POLISHED into something the sweet-tooth’s can enjoy means it spent many years as something they would have hated. Remember that.

Easily one of the best wines I’ve had this year.

1996 DOMINIO DE PINGUS Tempranillo ‘Flor de Pingus’ Ribera del Duero Spain 14.0

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