Bhilar Blanco 2022

David Sampedro is one of the best white wine producers in Rioja, so it's worth buying anything he makes, even his entry point offering. Pairing Viura and 10% Garnacha Blanca, this skin-fermented cuvée is a low intervention style with apple, baking yeast and pear flavours and a waxy, leesy mid-palate. 2024-26.

I retasted the 2022 Bhilar Blanco, which I sampled last year around this time, a blend of 80% Viura and 20% Garnacha Blanca from biodynamic vines that were harvested early in the warm 2022 vintage. It had 15 days of skin contact and fermented with indigenous yeasts. It matured in French oak containers of different sizes for one year. All the whites have the effect of the skin contact, which was not that long here, and it displays a golden color, a nose of pollen and yellow fruit, a moderate 12.5% alcohol and a pH of 3.34. The palate is round, with sweet fruit, very fine tannins and a dry, long finish. It's evolving very slowly. 18,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in November 2023. - Luis Gutiérrez.