Bodegas Pirineos'Orange' 2023
$33.00 RRP
A first release of this wine was made from the 2023 harvest.
Grown in very dry sandy foothills, it’s not quite a mono-varietal white – there’s a dash of Gewurztraminer in there. Low-cropped fruit, with small berries and natural concentration is picked as late as possible to enhance skin ripeness; preferencing phenolics to acidity for mouthfeel and structure. The next step - skin contact oxidative ageing - is quite subtle, as with all inputs in this beautifully balanced wine: there’s only a week or so on skins before a few months of ageing in stainless, at which point some pressings are added back in for further textural development.
The wine represents an update/recovery of a historical wine of the region. Traditionally, Somontano growers aged late-picked, dry, concentrated Macabeo in barrels at home, reserved as their family party wine. It is a style that is even recognised in the regulations of DO Somontano as "late-harvest Macabeo". Out of fashion, in 1996 Bodegas Pirineos discontinued it. Nearly 30 years down the track, this orange version is Jesus Astrain’s re-engagement with varietal Macabeo, explicitly textural rather than aromatic in intent. Welcome back!
BODEGAS PIRINEOS ‘Orange’ Macabeo
The base flavour of the Macabeo is Farinoso’, it smells of cereal, like ripe wild wheat. This base is simple, soft, earthy and attractive. In making an ‘orange’ version, Jesus has chosen to gently enhance ripeness and oxidative skin influences in a combination of subtle influences, and the result is a complex of many quiet added notes: cinnamon, bergamot, orange or mandarin peel, ginger and dried mango, orange pekoe’s smoky steel all mingling in a spicy, almost muscat-like fruit base … the latter no doubt due to the subtle addition of gewurztraminer!
The mouth is fresh with good natural acid salt-rimming round, gently textural fruit.