Beef
Chicken
Duck
Pork
Root Vegetables
Critic Scores
The super mineral 2016 ROC comes from a lighter vintage that produced elegant wines with some edgy tannins that might require time in bottle, even though the wines are lighter. I loved the wine as soon as I put my nose in the glass. It shared the meaty and iron hints with the Quite, so probably a characteristic from the cool, Atlantic 2016 vintage that has delivered serious, austere and mineral wines, with less weight but more nuance, spiciness and earthiness. It finishes dry and long, with clean flavors that are more about the soil than the fruit. This has to be the most serious and minerally vintage for ROC so far. I sampled the two components of the 2018 that were fermented separately, and the wines have a similar profile to this 2016. 4,740 bottles produced. It was bottled in March 2018. Since 2015 Vernica Ortega has vinified in her own small winery in Valtuille de Abajo, where I had the chance to visit. The progression has been tremendous, from 600 bottles in 2010 to the 45,000 she did in 2018. Elegant, perfumed wines from Bierzo. Most of the wines reviewed here are from the village of Valtuille, but there is one wine that comes from the village of Cobrana.
