2018 Dominio de Pingus ‘Psi’ Ribera del Duero

WA92-94 The approachable 2018 PSI shows the progression they have made in this wine, which has seen a jump in quality since they built their own winery, where they could work much better. After the frost of 2017, they were again able to use some 10% of Garnacha, which, in this wine, adds freshness, fruit and not a lot of tannin and contributes to lower the pH. It’s very juicy and very clean and precise, fresh like biting into a bunch of ripe grapes, and it developed notes of violets as the wine sat in the glass. The texture is similar to 2016; the wine is more layered. It’s still a baby and shows the baby fat, and the wine is currently in oak vat and should continue its élevage for a further eight months. The wine should be bottled in the summer of 2020 and released at the end of 2020. There will be some 340,000 bottles, which is their maximum possible to produce in the current facilities.

The affordable Pingus, the Baby-Pingus – but really a delicious and serious wine made by  winemaker Peter Sisseck.

Peter arrived in Spain in 1993 to manage a new project, Hacienda Monasterio. While planting and developing Monasterio, he began to dream about the old vines he saw dotted around the Ribera del Duero landscape. By the 1995 vintage, Peter had found a group of old vines that spurred him to embark on his own project. He called it “Pingus,” after his childhood nickname. That name today is synonymous with a benchmark for highest quality Spanish wine with a near-cult following.

PSI is made using grapes sourced from vine-growers with whom the winery has strict working agreements, from balanced vineyards, planted with bush vines on soils that are different in composition and averaging 30 years old in age. Maceration takes place in concrete tanks in order to obtain the maximum possible from the fruit aromas; and ageing occurs in concrete tanks, in large oak vats and in not-new barrels.