Finca Allende Allende Rosado 2018

Finca Allende is the estate of Miguel Angel de Gregorio in Briones, in the cooler, higher Rioja Alta. This rosado is made from Tempranillo and Garnacha and built deliberately against the idea that rosé is a wine to drink young and forget. The Rioja Alta sits at altitude with an Atlantic influence, and its clay-limestone soils and cool nights give wines with structure and freshness, holding acidity through a long ageing. The wine spends thirty months in French oak barrels, an unusually long oxidative elevage for a rosado. That slow, controlled exposure to oxygen through the wood softens and develops the wine, shifting the fruit towards dried and savoury notes and building texture, while the oak adds a toasted, nutty frame. The result is an orange, onion-skin colour rather than bright pink, and a complex nose of red fruit, dried apricot and orange peel over balsamic, toasted and earthy notes. The palate is fine and elegant, dry and textured, with round tannins from the long oak ageing and a savoury finish. This is a rosado to treat as a gastronomic white. Serve at 11 to 13 degrees in a white wine glass.