1995 Finca Dofi (Priorat)

Several months ago, I was able to put together a tasting of the most important half-dozen wines of Priorato, a small appellation about 50 miles west of Barcelona that in barely a decade has attracted a rabid international following for its immensely rich, high-octane reds. I sampled 12 wines: the '95 and '94 vintages of Clos de l'Obac, Clos Mogador, Clos Martínet, Clos Erasmus, L'Ermita Velles Vinyes, and Finca Dofí. The tasting was extremely revealing: the finest, best-balanced wines in both vintages were L'Ermita and Finca Dofí, both made by Alvaro Palacios, who grew up on his family estate in Rioja and broadened his winemaking experience in Bordeaux and Napa Valley. (L'Ermita, of course, is several times the price of the other bottlings—about $200 for the current release, the 1996—and a target for well-heeled collectors around the world. But Finca Dofí, at around $55, is the relative bargain of the pricey bunch.) Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity to taste a series of vintages with Palacios on his trip to New York in early June.x000D x000D x000D x000D x000D The 2.5-hectare L'Ermita vineyard, nearly all garnacha, was planted in the late 1930s, with vines running up and down the hillside. Yields are extremely low, ranging from 18 to 23 hectoliters per hectare. Finca Dofí, Palacios' second wine, is from seven hectares of vines (60% garnacha, 5% cariñena, and 35% cabernet sauvignon, syrah and merlot) planted on terraced vineyards in 1986; typical yields are in the 30-35-hectoliters-per-hectare range. L'Ermita is a full-throttle yet suave wine that Palacios views as a competitor to such great reds as Guigal's single-vineyard Côte-Rôties or Grange Hermitage. Dofí, meanwhile, is "the new face of Priorat," according to Palacios, who describes it as "a more technical" wine, without the soul of L'Ermita. That said, it is also an extremely rich and ripe but stylish wine that blows away most other examples from the Priorato appellation.x000D x000D x000D x000D Both wines are aged in all new barricas, 100% French oak since the '94 vintage. In contrast to most other Priorato wines, which can show distinctly roasted and sometimes rustic aromas and can be considerably higher in alcohol, Palacios's wines are typically in the 13.5% to 13.8% range, with stable acidity and low pHs. Palacios is convinced that his wines will develop slowly over a period of two decades or more, and my tasting confirmed that recent vintages, at least, are indeed evolving slowly. Palacios showed me all the vintages of L'Ermita he has made to date (including the not-yet-bottled '98 and '97, which he hand-carried from Spain), as well as the same six vintages of Finca Dofí. A cosmopolitan sort who actively tastes top wines from around the world, Palacios has made increasingly elegant wines in recent years without sacrificing density or texture.