Torre de Oña Finca Martelo Reserva 2019

The Finca Martelo 2016 comes from one of the longest harvests in its history. It is a blend of Tempranillo with other 6 varieties, Mazuelo, Garnacha, and even Viura white, intermingled in the field on a south-facing slope with very white soils. The grapes were hand-picked, destemmed and crushed, then subjected to a cold maceration for seven days before fermentation (without crushing) in stainless steel, followed by a malolactic fermentation that lasted 98 days. The wine matured in used oak barrels, 80 American and 20 French, for 24 months with four traditional rackings. This wine has a separate cellar with smaller vats for each of the plots, and the wine was kept in vat for another six months before being bottled in June 2020. It has 14.5% alcohol and a pH of 3.57. It has a vibrant, youthful color and a very expressive nose (due to the cold soak and semi-carbonic maceration), and there is a strong pungency despite never using new oak. It is sweet and round, with bright tannins and a very smooth mouthfeel, with good complexity and those calcareous tannins. It is a younger and more modern wine than the range of Rioja Alta. It is a wine that was developed between 2005 and 2012, and they found that the blend of barrels worked better than a single origin. 80,000 bottles have been produced.