'Dido' Garnatxa Tinto blend 2021

Sara’s tribute to “youth, tenacity, love and Grenache”. Who can argue …?
Organically grown on a 10 hectare plot of degraded granite (Montsant’s only gravel patch), Dido has been in production since 2005. The blend is 86% co-fermented Garnatxa-Syrah (1/5 is Syrah, which helps the local Garnatxa ferment better), with 7% each Cabernet and Merlot. It’s picked early, and needs to be largely de-stemmed, so the fermentation takes place in two parts. A 15% portion is used as a starter – whole bunches take wild yeast and are covered with sulphur for 8 days. This is then released into the balance of the fruit, de-stemmed and un-sulphured, and away we go. After fermentation in old hogsheads, the wines are long-aged, more than 18 months – a first year in large raw concrete and then a further 6 months or so in large Foudre of 5000 litres.

Bright and fresh red cherry fruit marked by mint and other local herbs, the wine shows the clear crunch of granite soil. Juicy and direct with macerated herbs, licorice and briar in lovely pastille fruit. Good concentration, rich-but-not-sweet country wine, it's all briar-herb-cane-brambly, with a nice little nudge of spice, allspice husk and leather in the soft savoury juice and a touch of chocolate in the soft leathery tannin. Clear and direct, with absolutely no wine-making clutter, it is delicately structured and savoury. A smasher!