2013 Bodegas Teso La Monja Victorino Toro 750 ml

Blue-Black Stunner from the Best Winery in Spain

This remarkable 2013 Teso La Monja “Victorino” is the product of a 100-point winemaking family and gnarled, pre-phylloxera, 70- to 100-year-old vines. From one of Spain’s greatest wineries, the 2013 “Victorino” stunned Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, which awarded it 94 points, lauding its “great freshness” and “fine-grained, firm and fine” tannins. “An elegant Toro within the natural power of the zone.” Named the “Best Winery in Spain” by the Penin Guide, Spain’s answer to Wine Spectator, Teso La Monja is without question a First Growth caliber estate. Wine Access’s Matt Deller MW imported the wines of the Eguren family for years, so when they came looking for a U.S. partner to allocate the last 300 bottles of this incredible 2013 vintage, they turned to us. This is one of the darkest, warmest, most voluminous wines we’ve tasted all year. Don’t let it slip through your fingers.

The Eguren family ranks with the best in the world at capturing the essence of a land into a bottle. Their first venture, Numanthia Termanthia, electrified the Toro region and elicited a 100-point score from Parker’s Wine Advocate, which advised readers: “If you have a soul, sell it to the devil for a few bottles of this extraordinary liquid.” After LVMH acquired the business, the Eguren brothers turned their focus to Teso La Monja, buying up old, sandy vineyards with low-yield ancient Tinta de Toro vines boasting deep root structures, spidering 3-4 meters underground.

Their plots in Toro, Villabuena del Puente, and Valdefinjas enjoy a longer vegetative cycle thanks to their cooler, north-east orientation, protection from southern winds, and large boulders which help modulate warmth in the soil. Ripening is slow, making for balanced sugars and alcohol, unsurpassed freshness, and gorgeous richness and intensity. A few bottles of this Spanish First Growth belong in every serious collector’s cellar.