PINGUS 2020

Description

Luis Gutiérrez 97-99 points www.robertparker.com

The unbottled 2020 Pingus shows another sunny year and displays some notes of black olives and Mediterranean herbs. It has the fine tannins that seem to be the flagship of these magic vineyards. The different components were blended (their experience is that the wine develops better if they do the blend early on), but I also tasted the separate components in barrel and in oak vat, and the blend felt better and more elegant than the wine exclusively from vat or from barrique. There are 28 barrels of this wine, and they expect to fill around 7,500 bottles in the summer of 2022.

I tasted the bottled 2019s from Pingus, a great vintage that follows the path of 2016 and 2018 (and continued by 2020). 2020 saw similar yields as 2019, both lower than 2018. 2018 was more challenging, and 2019 was a sunny year when they harvested early to keep the freshness. Sisseck compares 2019 with 2015, a very ripe year; but they managed to get fresher wine in 2019, and the wine overdelivered for their expectations. The bottled 2019 Pingus is truly outstanding. They thought of bottling it earlier but finally did a longer élevage. 2020 is also a warm and ripe year but with more finesse than 2019. As I saw last year, the wines age in oak vats and oak barrels, not only in barrel, and the integration of the oak is getting better and better.