San Román, Toro (Castilla y León, Spain) 2018

 This wine is already stupendously good — so striking in its excellence that I worry that it will make my already gaudy score look stingy when I revisit the wine years from now.  For the sake of context, I see the similar high scores for comparably-priced wines from Bordeaux from the trio of vintages 2018 – 2019, and now huge scores again for “futures” offerings from 2022, and they make me wonder:  How many wine lovers and collectors will pass on this because they think nothing from Spain could quite measure up to its French peers at this price level?  My guess is that the number is high, but that it would plummet if more of the people in question were ever to taste this.  Very dark and rich, with excellent aromatic and flavor expressiveness as well as complexity, it seems to show a different set of nuances with every sniff and sip.  It continued to accomplish that for 48 hours without ever showing any tiring over time, even though it was completely convincing from the moment the cork was pulled.  A longstanding piece of wisdom among generations of wine evaluators is that truly great wines are great at every stage of their development, and in my experience, showing greatness early on is much rarer than showing it with the benefit of — say — a decade in bottle.  This wine is already there.