Dominio de Atauta la Mala 2016 75cl

100% Tinto Fino.

The Wine Advocate I Jun 30, 2021 I Luis Gutiérrez
As the 2015 was not produced, I tasted the 2016 La Mala, the following vintage after the 2014. They vinify three different wines and then blend them. The vines have a lot of vigor but deliver small and loose bunches. 2016 has lots of finesse with good ripeness and fine tannins. It aged exclusively in used oak, a change form the past, and the oak feels very integrated. This is a wine with lots of personality, combining power and elegance. 876 numbered bottles were filled in September 2019.
The 2016s and 2017s from Dominio de Atauta are fully the responsibility of the new technical team of winemaker Jaime Suarez Pardo and viticulturist Ismael Sanz. They control 500 separate plots in the Atauta Valley (a total of 45 hectares), where they have identified up to 25 different terroirs and bottle some blends and different parajes (lieu dits) and single-vineyard wines, in total 60,000 to 120,000 bottles, depending on the vintage. 2017 was a vintage marked by the spring frost, but in the Soria province and particularly in the Atauta zone, as the vines had not sprouted, it was a "normal" vintage for them, just a little warmer and drier. In fact, they consider some of the 2017s to be some of the best wines they have ever produced; for them, it was a super vintage. 2018 has great balance and tension, but they adapted the work in the vineyards in 2017 and feel the wines are every bit as good as the 2018s. However, I loved the 2016 single vineyards, from a rainy and abundant year. The 2015s were not produced, as they had frost and didn't consider the grapes were good enough for the style of their wines.