Los Yesares 2021

 When you come across the selection a wine shop has to offer you also come across a whole market philosophy and how the owners/managers position themselves towards the wine world.

This can be a political statement, a specific way of interpreting what is relevant in the wine world, an attempt to understand and perceive what a certain kind of customers want and to attract them, or to simply try to follow the latest trends. 

I am sure there are many other approaches on how to create a portfolium that can fit in a shop, but that is not the main subject I want to write about.

Recently, I have been looking more attentively to what kind of wine people in Germany are selling on Ebay and I have to confess that I find it tremendously fascinating to dive into personal collections or, as it often happens, the personal collection of someone who has recently died.

 By going through it, I have the feeling of immersing in very personal stories as well as reliving a piece of history. Certain kind of wines were very popular at a certain time and you can somehow track the age of the people who have first bought them. 

In other cases you can with shocking precision determine when a certain person has stopped buying wine as you can see the latest vintages available. In case of people who have passed away, you often have a five or six years apart from the last vintage and the moment of the sale at Ebay.

You also often have people asking for prices which are not realistic or too much for what they are trying to sell, revealing an over romanticization of wine and its ageing potential.

Most of these wines even show clear signs of not being proper to drink any longer with low filling levels or clear cork problems. 

Still, you can also come across some nice surprises like this Los Yesares.

Originary from Jumilla, Spain it has quite some grapes that I have never heard of like Moravia Agria or Forcallat, in a cuvée dominated by the inevitable Monastrell. This is one of the most fascinating thiungs about this Stratum Wines project which I sincerily invite you to know.  In the bottle they write that is a project that aims the recovery of the "vegetal heritage". What it means locally it is even more fascinating. Besides the recovery of old vins, they also engage into the recovery of local vegetation, actively fighting the devastating effects of climate change.

The wine presents itself as deep, complex, light smokiness, spices but a pleasant freshness that makes us keep on drinking it without getting this feeling of being over filled or the palate tired.

You can also feel the liveliness of a low intervention wine which, not being completely a nature wine, it has this slight wildness with the typical yeasty notes.

In fact, this is sort of a underdog which is capable of surprising everyone at a gathering.  

Even though I have decided to already open it, it could still stand for a couple of years more with the possibility of further development. 

A couple of years ago I used to sell their wines and it was really a nice surprise to come across it again, relivening this positive image I had of this winery. 

 

16,5/20
Country: Spain
Region: Jumilla
Grapes: Monastrell, Moravia Agria, Forcallat, Blanquilla, Rojal
Winemaker: Carlos Cerdán, Juan José Cerdán
14%
Link: https://vinacerron.com/