Full bottle 1,246 g. 100% Tinta de Pais (aka Tempranillo). Protos '27 was a cuvée made to celebrate the 90th anniversary of Protos (founded by 11 winegrowers in 1927). They've revived the original label from the first bottle that Protos ever released. The vines for this wine are around 50 years old, growing at 850 m above sea level in the Roa-La Horra-Anguix triangle on clay-based soils. Hand-picked, hand-sorted, a few days of cold maceration and then fermentation (using inoculated indigenous yeasts – the result of a 10-year-research project) in large stainless-steel tanks at controlled temps of 25 °C. Three weeks of fermentation and maceration with pigeage and remontage several times a day. 16 months in new French oak barrels and 12 months in bottle.
To call this a 'modern/approachable' style is to be both factual and do it a disservice. The fruit is dark, plush; it's ripe damson skins and roasted chestnuts, wild thyme and vanilla pod with a tiny sweet sherbety pop of wild mountain strawberry that makes your mouth fill with freshness and mouth-watering liveliness. The tannins have the aristocratic, superbly confident, yet nonchalant restraint of an accomplished rider astride a powerful horse, cantering, reins deceptively loose in one hand. It has ink-dusted shadows, brushed-velvet corners, a deep gleam to the inner structure like rosewood polished for years and years. You could drink this, easily, now, in five years, in 10 years. It's modern, approachable and timeless.