Score: 90/100
This wine is produced by the Viñedos y Bodegas Vegalfaro.
It comes under the D.O. appellation (Denominación de Origen) Utiel-Requena, a wine region in the Valencia province on the Mediterranean Coast of Spain.
This Caprasia wine is made with 100% of the local Bobal grape variety sourced from old vines (55 years’ average) on clay-limestone soils).
After fermentation, it was aged for 14 months in French, Hungarian, and Romanian oak barrels before going through 5 further months of ageing in clay amphorae.
So how good is this 2014 Vegalfaro Caprasia Bobal?
The answer is in the tasting notes:
A very dark red dense color, purple on the rim. Intense and youthful.
The wine smells very ripe and powerful too.
What first strikes in the aroma profile are the dark super-toasted notes of coffee liqueur, cocoa, nearly-burnt hazelnut.
But the fruit characters quickly come to the rescue to make the wine smell fruity, jammy in fact is probably more the word: strawberry jam, fig jam even perhaps.
It smells sweet and jammy.
At agitating the glass, more savory aromas come out: earthiness, mushroom, perhaps some vegetal character like dried wood, or ripe dried grape stalks.
The complexity and power of this wine is actually revealed on the palate. We had a clue about on the nose, but the palate says it clearly: “this is seriously powerful, rich and dense Spanish wine”.
It’s full bodied, and feels dry although the ripe red fruit flavors and sweet spices bring some perceived sweetness.
Tannins are very dense, numerous, and rather fine. They’re velvety more than silky but they feel smooth and rounded. A wealth of oaky flavors: clove, some vanilla, hazelnut give a hint that this wine has spent some time in oak barrels. Rather good ones by the feel of it.
Overall
A rich, ripe, fruity, heavily toasted, and more importantly juicy wine that over delivers on expectations.
Like often with quality SPanish red wines, this wine represents very good value for the bucks (about 10 euros, $11 USD, in Europe that is).
Plenty of quality tannins, a full body, loads of jammy fruit flavors. There’s a modern style to this wine. But the spiciness and a certain dose of earthiness give away its ‘Old World’ and more specifically Spanish origin.
Extrovert, powerfully built wine, with a definite depth and loads of personality, like some of the great Spanish wines (and people) we love.
Please let me know your thoughts