Calma Indómita Prieto Picudo 2023, León

Mauricio Lorca

Yet another grape variety that we were not familiar with – every day’s a school day in the world of wine! This is quite a rare varietal, native to León with small, dark-skinned berries that can produce lots of colour and structure when not used to make locally popular dark rosado style wines. The clusters are small and long / conical in shape, thus the name Prieto (dark-skinned) Picudo (pointed). After a gentle crush there are regular pump-overs to extract plenty of dark brooding colour, but this is carefully slowed down and the skins are removed before the end of fermentation to keep the tannins in check with the fruit. The nose is wild and bramble-filled with scented, almost garrigue-like notes of dried flowers and herbs. It’s a big wine in the mouth but retains delicious freshness with its high natural acidity and there is no oak ageing – there’s no need!