PROYECTO GARNACHAS | La Garnatxa Fosca del Priorat | 2015
grenache

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The wine we are going to review today is very special and even unique, as this is a single-varietal grenache wine from the Spain’s famous Priorat region – La Garnatxa Fosca del Priorat 2015 by Proyecto Garnachas. Priorat produces some of the finest and most expensive wines of Spain – it is hard to imagine that 20 years ago this entire area and its wines were nearly forgotten. The wines made here carry the signature of the region’s soils – the llicorella soil mix of granite and slate that adds a firm mineral note to every wine. The story of this wine begins with an adventure, when the father of Raúl Acha wanted to uproot the old garnacha vines, but Raúl defends their value and to prove his opinion, he sets out on a journey through the Ebro Valley – he choses six small areas to settle down and start the Proyecto Garnachas. La Garnatxa Fosca del Priorat embeds the character and the personality of a unique territory – it is a wine made of grapes from 60 years old vines planted predominately on slate soils at an altitude of 310 meters. The wine has been traditionally aged for 10 months in French oak barrels. That said, without further ado, let’s take a look at the wine tasting results.
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Take a look at the tasting notes below and our detailed assessment of the wine:

//Visual
concentration: pale
colour: garnet
clarity: transparent
hue/rim: garnet

//Olfactory
intensity: powerful
fruit profile: red fruits & berry fruits
__red fruits: sweet cherry | red plum | red currant | cranberry
__berry fruits: aronia berry | goji berry
fruit character: ripe & overripe

//Flavor
non fruit: spice | oak | earth
__spice: red pepper | nutmeg
__oak: sweet tobacco
__earth: red soil dust
__wood: old /  medium
aroma: primary | secondary

//Palate
sweetness: dry
acidity: high
alcohol: med(+)
tannin: med(+)
__grip: ripe
body: full
balance: good
__dominant: alcohol
complexity: complex

//Taste
fruit profile: red fruits
fruit character: ripe
non fruit: spice
finish: med(+)
aftertaste: velvety

//Scoring
PROYECTO GARNACHAS | La Garnatxa Fosca del Priorat | 2015
variety: grenache
country: Spain
region: Catalonia | Priorat
rating: 93.5

//Conclusion
maturity: in its prime
verdict: great
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This is definitely a great wine of Spain and, with a total of 93.5 points scored, this wine is right there, among the best wines we’ve rated so far. Check our complete database on the wine rating page, where you can find all the wines that we have tasted and reviewed or go to the about us page and find out more about our exquisite rating system.

Verdict: this is definitely one of the finest garnacha wines we’ve tasted so far – dusty, elegant and complex, with a nuanced fruit-forward profile, fine-grained tannins and a touch of alcoholic warmth on the mouthfeel. The wine tastes rich, noble and round, with a full body and some subtle seediness towards the end of the palate. All in all, this is a quite appealing and very well structured wine that is definitely right there, at the summit of its prime form, therefore drink it now or in the next 1 or 2 years. Our suggestion is to drink it today rather than tomorrow, but if you still decide to store it for a bit longer, just make sure to not overdo it, as once the wine has started to decline (to lose fruit and flavour at such a rate that the acidity or tannins start to dominate and make the wine taste angular) there is no way back.
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