Las Tres Filas 2020

This shows notes of blackberries and blueberries with hints of walnuts, dried herbs, baking spices and cocoa nibs. Medium-to full-bodied with chalky, dusty tannins and a smooth, seamless texture. Juicy and crunchy blue-fruit character and notes of chocolate and licorice to close. Drink or hold.

Our Best in Show journey across Northern Spain continues with a 2020 Bierzo, grown just across the provincial border from Galicia into Castilla y Léon. It’s another zone of steep slopes and old vines – the variety in this case being Mencia (known as Jaen in Portugal’s Dão region). This wine is deep black-red in colour and vivacious and urgent in aroma: wild plums mingled with the woodland scents of leaf, copse and forest floor. The palate is fruit-packed and vibrant, vigorous with an energy derived both from ripe acidity and fresh though smooth tannins; look out, too, for a stony, bitter-edged finish perhaps derived from the region’s slate soils. Wonderful drinking now in the flush of youth, but fruit of this quality will hold well for a few years yet.