Aalto PS 2022

A rich, deep and complex nose with plenty of wood spices, dark chocolate, fresh blackberries, violets and a touch of graphite. The highlight on the full-bodied palate is the quality and quantity of the tannins, which are massive but polished and dissolved. Really firm and long. Better from 2026, when the wood spices settle more.

There's always a little bit more of everything in the PS compared with the regular Aalto. The 2022 PS, cropped from a very warm and dry year, is not only more powerful and tannic but also more balanced and elegant, in that Castilian rustic way. It comes in at 15% alcohol and packs a punch; it's generously oaked (it spent 20 months in new French oak barrels), creamy, toasty and smoky and leaves a dry, chalky sensation in the finish. This is very much for the fans of the style. It's powerful and concentrated with abundant oak. 35,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in September 2024. (Luis Gutiérrez)

PS retails at nearly three times the price of the regular Aalto release, and uses grapes from the contrasting villages of La Aguilera, La Horra and Baños de Valdearados. Inky, powerful, concentrated and lavishly wooded in 100% new oak, this is a wine that's constructed for the long haul, like a Bordeaux First Growth, with layers of dark chocolate, fig and damson and muscular tannins. 2027-40.