Bodegas Peñalba Herraiz, Ribera del Duero (Castilla y León, Spain) 2020

 Biodynamically grown and aged for just 9 months in used barriques, this is a wine that’s evidently intended to display pure primary fruit — which it does, and brilliantly.  To emphasize “pure primary fruit” as I have done here runs the risk of suggesting that the wine is simple (which it is not) or unstructured (which it is not).  On the contrary, the wine is impressively complex despite its youthfulness, but the complexities are nuances in the fruit as grown in the vineyard rather than derived from cellar treatments.  Moreover, the wine has very good acidity and tannic structure, but these components are so well integrated with the fruit’s character that they don’t come across as distinct elements unless one is tasting critically and trying to focus on them.  In sum, this is utterly delicious young wine that should be credited for exactly those attributes — rather than being regarded as just “good” because it isn’t overly pushy or in need of a decade of cellaring.