Bodegas Arrocal, Ribera del Duero (Castilla y León, Spain) 2018

 I’ve never tasted a vintage of this wine that wasn’t excellent regardless of whether price was taken into consideration.  When one does consider cost, it then emerges as one of the best values of any wine from Ribera del Duero, always challenging the top wines — but often at only about half their prices.  In 2018, it shows excellent concentration and depth of flavor, and yet these virtues weren’t gained by over-ripening or over-extracting the fruit, or by juking the wine up with excessive oak toast.  It manages to show very fine purity and poise even on a large frame, with very well-tuned balance between fruit, tannin, acidity and wood.  It is already very enjoyable thanks to its exemplary proportionality, but will clearly develop in a positive direction for at least 5 to 7 years, and perhaps notably longer.  When time in bottle has lent tertiary savory notes, this will likely make my score look low in retrospect.