1994 Pesquera Gran Reserva

What is Edifice Rex Alejandro Fernandez up to this year? For starters, the dynamic creator of Pesquera has purchased a winery in La Mancha and will make a wine there in 1999. He has also recently bought and planted 100 hectares of vineyards in Badillo de la Guarena, just south of the Toro appellation; he made his first wine there from purchased old-vines fruit in the '98 vintage. And, at Pesquera, he in the process of building a new fermentation facility and barrel cellar to keep pace with expanding production (Fernandez will vinify a million liters at Pesquera in '99, about half from purchased fruit). Among the wines Fernandez showed me on my recent visit was a special millennium bottling from the 1996 vintage that was aged in all new French oak. Fernandez has long felt that the sweeter French oak barrels, in conjunction with the sweet tempranillo fruit, would produce excessively candied wine; yet he considers this special bottlings one of his best wines to date, and plans to use more French barrels in the future "for the special years." Fernandez tends to pick early before the grapes lose acidity, and his wines remain some of the freshest and finest of the appellation-world-class wines that showcase the sweetness of Ribera del Duero tempranillo without the rusticity that still characterizes so many wines from this region.