$52.99
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The Wine
While all Valenciso's wines see the inside of some concrete during their élevage, this new bottling, as the name suggests, has been fermented and raised entirely in concrete vats. It's 100% Tempranillo drawn from a group of old-vine vineyards nestled in the limestone-rich hillsides of Haro and Ollauri. All up, this was aged for 30 months before bottling, resulting in a wonderfully bright and complex wine with wild blackberry and plum characters, laced with hints of black pepper in an elegant and rounded palate with fine, lingering tannins.
The Review
"This enticingly packaged new red does what is says on the label and was fermented and aged in concrete. Spicy and understated with plenty of sappy intensity, lovely purity and layers of crunchy plum and black cherry fruit. A promising début." 93 points, Tim Atkin MW, Rioja Special Report 2022
"One of the particularities from Valenciso is that they started using concrete (cemento) for the fermentation if their wines right from the beginning in 1998. Now they release a 2018 Cemento, the first vintage of a young, juicy and fruit-driven wine with soft extraction, keeping the fruit and liveliness through aging the wine exclusively in concrete for two and a half years. It's juicy and ripe without excess at 14% alcohol, and it has a medium to full body, a gentle texture with fine tannins and very good freshness." 93 points, Luis Gutiérrez, The Wine Advocate
