Cheap little Garnacha I was curious about… Smells like soap and soiled laundry, a little wet dog gracing funky earth. Bum armpit and burnt rubber–which are not all horrible things, but taken as a whole make things rather boring. The whole thing just smells cheap and tired, which–for 2021–shouldn’t be happening.
Gracefully thin on the palate–again: not a terribly indicting profile for grenache–but with a low-brow acidity churning in to make the fruit uninteresting, though pie-cherry and raspberry do their best to pull things together. Bitter and chemical-ly in finish… I *suppose* you could call that “tannin” but I’ve seen smoother structure in acai juice. Probably well worth the 10 bucks I paid, and on a resty list with hearty fare would pay 30 for it, but it’s really mostly a pass.
2021 BODEGA MANZANOS ‘Castillo d Logrono’ Garnacha Rioja DOC Spain 13.5
Stephen McConnell 