2012 Elias Mora Crianza Toro Spain 750 ml

For Brooding Spanish Power, Turn to Toro

Showing impressive power and cut and superb grippy tannins, the 2012 Elias Mora Crianza is a triumph of old-vine Toro winemaking—a bold Spanish red of Châteauneuf-like complexity. This bottling earned a place on the coveted Wine Enthusiast “Editor’s Choice” list, and Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate noted, “This wine is powerful and concentrated, yes, but it's fresh and balanced, and the tannins are present but fine-grained.” “This is an impressive Crianza.” For a wine of this pedigree, the list price of $40 is perfectly reasonable. And as this is a bottle built to age well into the next decade, the initial investment will pay growing dividends with each passing year.

Bodegas Elias Mora is “among Spain’s elite,” wrote Vinous in a recent vintage report on Central Spain, mentioning the winery in the same breath as legends like Numanthia and Vega Sicilia. For American drinkers, Rioja and Ribera del Duero can monopolize attention when it comes to Spanish reds, but the Toro region—with its profundity of gnarled old-vine Tempranillo (or Tinta de Toro locally)—cannot be beat for wines sinewed with muscle and brooding, black fruit power.

At Bodegas Elias Mora, the vines are 20 years old on average, the oldest easily surpassing half a century in age. With root structures spidering deep underground in search of precious water reserves, the few clusters eked out by each bush are supercharged with concentration, making for some of the darkest, richest, most voluminous wines we’ve tasted out of Central Spain. Winemaker Victoria Benavides, who grows Tempranillo and nothing else, is preoccupied with purity and typicity. Her winery, built in 2000, takes its name from the previous owner of the vineyards, who sold the land on the precondition that he be allowed to tend the vines till his death. That’s the kind of passionate attachment this terroir can engender.

Today the winery owns 39 acres and controls farming and harvesting for a total of 172 acres. Each of the dozens of plots are meticulously managed accounting for soil variation (clay and limestone beneath sand and pebbles) and vine age; vines are trained in the traditional vaso or goblet shape, keeping yields low. Elevations of over 2,200 feet preserve freshness, as does the stark diurnal temperature variation, seesawing between oven-dry afternoon heat and cold dark nights.

Aged for 12 months in 50% French and 50% American oak barrels, the critically acclaimed 2012 Elias Mora Crianza is powerful and traditionally structured, with the chocolatey dark fruit to enjoy now, and the tannic bones to age for years to come.