Álvaro Palacios - Priorat Les Terrasses 2021 (750ml)
Wine Advocate: 94-96 Points
The sample of the 2021 Les Terrasses Velles Vinyes was truly impressive, a blend of 70% Garnacha and 30% Cariñena. It's a lively and vibrant Priorat with lower alcohol and higher acidity and more freshness, pointing at a great vintage in the making. This could very well be the finest vintage of Terrasses, a wine that Álvaro Palacios defined as a year of concentration and class. The wine is clean and pure, with great precision. It matured in barrel and cask for the past seven months, and the wine will continue its élevage for one more year. They expect to fill some 110,000 bottles and 2,000 magnums around May 2023.
I tasted the bottled 2020s and barrel samples of the 2021s as part of Álvaro Palacios's portfolio tasting earlier this year, but I am including those notes here for context and completeness of the article.
2020 was an atypical year, with spring rains like never before (674 liters). There was mildew in Priorat, quite unusual, and they lost a lot of Cariñena; the wines have lots of power and concentration and are opulent; and they harvested a lot earlier (l'Ermita was harvested the 25th of September!). 2021 was also dry, with limited vigor and with a cool summer and a rainy harvest; the grapes struggled to ripen, with the 2021 l'Ermita having lower alcohol than ever. Palacios was ecstatic about the 2021s, which he called "a year of concentration and class."
