Bodegas Elías Mora, Toro Crianza (Castilla y León, Spain) 2019

 This offering seemed surprisingly tart and acidic when the cork was first pulled, but opened up and broadened out in just a few minutes without any aeration or decanting.  Still, rather astringent tannins in the wine’s finish suggest that this needs more time in bottle to achieve a fully coherent profile.  One way to test that is to try the wine again a day later, which is exactly what I did with this wine and all the others reviewed below.  When re-tasted, the tannins had rounded out somewhat, but there was still clear room for improvement with aging, as the wine’s acidity was quite bright and a bit awkward in relation to the ripe sweetness of the fruit.  To be clear, I would be disappointed in a $40 wine that did not show a capacity for improvement from cellaring, so this is not a knock on this wine — just advice for how to treat it.  One more thing: $40 would seem like an insane price for Crianza if this were from Rioja, as that’s become a largely woeful category populated mostly by $15 wines that taste more like the inside of a barrel than like “wine.”  This is from 50-year-old, own-rooted bush vines, and is an utterly different animal.  It deserves cellaring, and it you don’t have the patience or space to do that, lean toward the 2018 “Descarte” from this house.