Jose Gil Rioja San Vincente
One of the great vignerons of Rioja, without a doubt. FERRAN CENTELLES, www.jancisrobinson.com
Jose Gil is one of the leading young producers in Rioja and the whole of Spain. He comes from a family of vignerons in San Vicente de la Sonsierra. He works the vineyards and makes the wine together with his wife. They now work eight hectares of vineyards and do all the work themselves. In 2021 they have more plots, and they fermented a white (around 1,000 bottles) and will do a total of 23,000 bottles. LUIS GUITTEREZ
Some of you might remember me offering the previous vintage of these wines last year from Jose Gil, one of the most exciting "new" producers creating new wave Rioja of startling quality. That wine (2020 San Vincente) later became my pick in our annual Staff Picks, best wine of the year. I bought a swag of it myself and every now and then I drag a bottle out to reacquaint myself with that same electric, razor-focussed wine I fell in love with back then.
Well, I've just tasted the 2021 and it's better. I hate to say it and it sounds like marketing but it's all the 2020 was, but slightly heightened aromatics and, if it is possible, even more crystalline and pure. Same depth of red-to-blue fruit, same cold dark mineral-flecked nuance, same palate staining intensity but, with the dial turned up a notch. I can see why Ferran Centelles called him one of the great vignerons of Rioja, without a doubt. OR when Luis Guitterez names him as one of the leading young producers in Rioja and the whole of Spain. As I said last year, to get this kind of response after only a couple of vintages the guy's gotta be a rare talent. He is.
Before I go on about the current lineup of releases - the beautiful village wine (San Vicente) is the key here for me while the single site wines are an exploration in terroir-driven textural and fruit spectrum difference - let me recap a little of who the hell this crew is, where and how the farm.
Jose Gil is a new label (using old vine vineyards) located in north-central part of Rioja at San Vincente. Its main protagonists are the husband/wife/winemaker/viticulturalist team of Jose and Vicky Gil. Jose is from a multi-generational Riojan wine family and Vicky is ex-hospo from Bilbao. They farm a clutch of old-vine plots in and around San Vincente - a village under the Cantabrian mountains and at the hypothetical intersection between the blue note wines influenced by the Atlantic and the red notes of the Mediterranean. Refreshingly, the wines can now bear the name of the village on the label (San Vincente). This is so important for enhancing an understanding of regional terroir identity that, for so long have been hidden behind broad labelling regimes like Reserva and Gran Reserva.
??
Farming here is organic and winemaking follows a pretty simple methodology - fermentation in stainless and concrete cubes, wild yeast ferments and elevage in both concrete and larger older barrels. . Sometimes there's a little bunch and sometimes not, mostly not.
Now, getting back to this wine. As I said at the opening, it's fabulous and a worth successor to the 2020 that caught my imagination last year. There's something about the purity of the fruit, the florals, the brown spice and the cool directness of the wine that makes you feel like it flows out of rock. Long and aristocratic. It's a ripper, pure and simple. Buy it.
I also have a few bottles of the single vineyard wines Gil makes. They too are wonderful, all subtly different and all hewn from an ancient terroir ??????or, at least that's how it feels.
Cheers
Michael McNamara
Jose Gil is one of the leading young producers in Rioja and the whole of Spain. He comes from a family of vignerons in San Vicente de la Sonsierra. He works the vineyards and makes the wine together with his wife. They now work eight hectares of vineyards and do all the work themselves. In 2021 they have more plots, and they fermented a white (around 1,000 bottles) and will do a total of 23,000 bottles. LUIS GUITTEREZ
Some of you might remember me offering the previous vintage of these wines last year from Jose Gil, one of the most exciting "new" producers creating new wave Rioja of startling quality. That wine (2020 San Vincente) later became my pick in our annual Staff Picks, best wine of the year. I bought a swag of it myself and every now and then I drag a bottle out to reacquaint myself with that same electric, razor-focussed wine I fell in love with back then.
Well, I've just tasted the 2021 and it's better. I hate to say it and it sounds like marketing but it's all the 2020 was, but slightly heightened aromatics and, if it is possible, even more crystalline and pure. Same depth of red-to-blue fruit, same cold dark mineral-flecked nuance, same palate staining intensity but, with the dial turned up a notch. I can see why Ferran Centelles called him one of the great vignerons of Rioja, without a doubt. OR when Luis Guitterez names him as one of the leading young producers in Rioja and the whole of Spain. As I said last year, to get this kind of response after only a couple of vintages the guy's gotta be a rare talent. He is.
Before I go on about the current lineup of releases - the beautiful village wine (San Vicente) is the key here for me while the single site wines are an exploration in terroir-driven textural and fruit spectrum difference - let me recap a little of who the hell this crew is, where and how the farm.
Jose Gil is a new label (using old vine vineyards) located in north-central part of Rioja at San Vincente. Its main protagonists are the husband/wife/winemaker/viticulturalist team of Jose and Vicky Gil. Jose is from a multi-generational Riojan wine family and Vicky is ex-hospo from Bilbao. They farm a clutch of old-vine plots in and around San Vincente - a village under the Cantabrian mountains and at the hypothetical intersection between the blue note wines influenced by the Atlantic and the red notes of the Mediterranean. Refreshingly, the wines can now bear the name of the village on the label (San Vincente). This is so important for enhancing an understanding of regional terroir identity that, for so long have been hidden behind broad labelling regimes like Reserva and Gran Reserva.
??
Farming here is organic and winemaking follows a pretty simple methodology - fermentation in stainless and concrete cubes, wild yeast ferments and elevage in both concrete and larger older barrels. . Sometimes there's a little bunch and sometimes not, mostly not.
Now, getting back to this wine. As I said at the opening, it's fabulous and a worth successor to the 2020 that caught my imagination last year. There's something about the purity of the fruit, the florals, the brown spice and the cool directness of the wine that makes you feel like it flows out of rock. Long and aristocratic. It's a ripper, pure and simple. Buy it.
I also have a few bottles of the single vineyard wines Gil makes. They too are wonderful, all subtly different and all hewn from an ancient terroir ??????or, at least that's how it feels.
Cheers
Michael McNamara