Legaris Reserva is a Tinto Fino (Tempranillo) single varietal, from vines over 40 years old situated at altitudes above 850 m/2790 ft. We only bottle those vintages in which the grapes have attained full phenolic maturity, capable of producing wines with great bottle-aging potential, and we are quite ready to rule out bottling Legaris Reserva if the Ribera del Duero vintage fails to fully meet requirements (we recently skipped the 2013 vintage). We produced a total of 74,900 bottles of the 2015 vintage.
Winemaking:
The grapes were harvested manually in 15 kg/33 lb boxes. When they reached the winery, they were stored in
a cold room overnight at 6 ºC/43 °F and the following morning they were thoroughly inspected on the sorting
table. After destemming, the grapes were transported on a conveyor, arriving practically whole in the
tapered, 5200-L/1374-gal stainless steel tanks. They were vinified separately according to provenance. We started with a cold soak for several days before alcoholic fermentation, which was carried out with wild yeasts at 28-30 ºC/82-86 °F, to express the characteristics of the different terroirs, respecting the uniqueness of each vintage. Frequent manual punch downs were carried out during fermentation. The wine was devatted on average 3 weeks after the grapes had been vatted and only the free-run wine was employed, without adding the press wine.
Legaris Reserva was made in smallsized 5200-L/1370-gal tanks, each holding the grapes of a different choice
plot from one of the municipalities. The wine from each tank was racked to French oak barrels, were it underwent malolactic fermentation. Subsequently, the wine remained 14 months in French fine-grain oak barrels, half of which were new and the other half had one wine. The final blend was then made. This wine was bottled on the lees, without fining, in July 2019.
