San Román is the product of Bodegas Mauro’s work in Toro where Mauro is involved in a new wine project that has finished with the construction of a new winery in Pedrosa del Rey (Valladolid). Mauro’s interest in Toro began in 1995, studying various terroirs with different microclimates and the characteristics and potential of the Tinta de Toro and Garnacha grape varieties. The purpose of these experiments was to get powerful yet elegant wines with subtle tannins and alcohol-acidity balance. Harvested at ~30% lower yields than other recent vintages and two weeks earlier than normal due to the drought conditions in central Spain. Older vineyards and those at higher elevations showed more complete and regular ripening. All fruit was hand harvested with varieties and vineyards being vinified separately to respect the characteristics of the different terroirs. The wine was fermented / macerated for 20 days and aged for 23 months in new French oak and semi-new American oak barrels. Bottled without filtration.
94pts The Wine Advocate – 2016 vintage
“The 2016 San Román was cropped from a generous vintage, which meant great balance in the grapes, good freshness, very fine tannins and less concentration. Having said that, I think the wine has great aging potential; it’s not really a light wine (it’s Toro after all), and it has structure and good grip and a classical profile, still quite generously oaked and in need of some time in bottle. They used a small percentage of 500-liter barrels for the élevage of some plots. It should turn into a very classical García wine with a few years in bottle. 100,000 bottles produced. It matures in oak for two years. It was bottled in January 2019.”
94pts View from the Cellar – 2016 vintage
The 2016 San Román Tinto, which is the winery’s flagship bottling, is comprised from one hundred percent old vine Tempranillo, with the vines ranging from sixty to more than ninety years of age, with all of these vineyards certified organically-farmed. The wine is fermented with indigenous yeasts and raised in a combination of three-quarters French oak and one-quarter American casks, with both two hundred and twenty-five and five hundred liter barrels utilized. Only twenty-five percent of the oak is new. The wine offers up a superb bouquet, wafting from the glass in a mix of black cherries, black plum, Cuban cigar, a touch of anise, clove-like spice tones, a fine base of soil and a very refined foundation of new oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and impressively transparent for its octane level (it is listed at 14.5 percent, but carries it seamlessly and seems cooler in the mouth), with a great core of fruit, impeccable focus and balance and a very long, ripely tannic and very classy finish. This is one of the best young examples of Toro I have tasted in ages, but one would expect this from a winery founded by Mariano Garcia (of Vega Sicilia fame) and now run by his two sons, Alberto and Eduardo Garcia! 2030-2055+.
92pts James Suckling – 2016 vintage
Lovely bright fruit on display here, ranging from elderberries to blueberries to blackberries with lavender undertones. Medium-bodied with some really firm tannins and quite structured on the finish. Drink now.
