Arrocal Reserva de Familia - 2019 (750ml)

95 points Wine Review Online

Although this was notably woody and tight when first opened, it opened and broadened very impressively with an hour’s worth of aeration, and got nothing but better for 48 hours after being tasted initially. I’d expect nothing less from this already-superb and still-improving producer, which is family-owned and firmly rooted in its rather sleepy village of Gumiel de Mercado. This top-of-the-line bottling from 2019 is admirably concentrated and flavorful but without seeming overblown in any respect, staking its claim to excellence on purity of fruit more than sheer weight. The finish very long and virtually perfectly proportioned once the wine opens a bit, with fruit, acidity, wood and tannin all working together in beautiful harmony.
Michael Franz - Issue: June 20th, 2023

94 points View from the Cellar

The Reserva de Familia is the very old vine bottling from Bodegas Arrocal, as these more than seventy year-old vines all hail from the vineyard of Guardaviñas, which is planted at eight hundred-sixty meters of elevation and, of course, farmed organically. These old tempranillo vines produce very low yields and the wine is fermented with native yeasts, undergoes malolactic fermentation in cask and is raised in seventy percent French and thirty percent American oak casks for fully two years before bottling. The wine comes in at 14.5 percent alcohol in 2019, but is seamless and offers up superb depth in its bouquet of sweet dark berries, black plums, cloves, cocoa powder, stony soil tones, cigar smoke and a lovely foundation of cedary oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, focused and complex with a superb core of old vine fruit, excellent soil undertow and grip, ripe, buried tannins and impeccable balance on the long and very classy finish. This is still a puppy and deserves more bottle age to blossom fully, but if you splurge for a case, it is certainly not a crime to open a bottle or two in this first blush of youth! Great juice. 2030-2085.
John Gilman - Issue #103 January/February 2023.