Scala Dei, Heretge Carinyena, Priorat, Spain 2017

The second Priorat to impress our judges convincingly enough to win inclusion in our top 50 Best In Show is a pure Carinyena…and surely makes a case for this schist-soiled region in Catalonia to be considered the pre-eminent global terroir for this much-maligned variety. This four-year-old wine is still dark black-purple in colour, with typically arresting sour-sweet Carinyena fruits lifting from the glass and evoking a wilderness landscape by their very wildness, as if pounded with stems on stones. The wine is almost medicinally intense in the mouth and once again offers a striking tutorial in the beauty of mingling sour and sweet; there is ample fine-grained tannic texture, and sweeping raptor-like acidity. It might all lack harmony -- but it doesn’t: the overall effect in the mouth is shapely, assured. Fine wine in dramatic style.

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