The 2022 Louro still feels a little reductive and has pungent balsamic notes of bay leaf. It was a very warm year with constant heat and very healthy grapes. It keeps the freshness but still feels the roundness of the year. Most of the grapes were picked before the rain they had in September. It's tasty with a salty twist in the finish. These wines benefit from time in bottle; this 2022 still feels too young and undeveloped to me.

The 2021 Louro feels fresh, elegant and balanced, setting the tone for the vintage, a cooler year with lighter wines and higher acidity. The grapes are always picked at full maturity with good development of aromas and flavors, and the work is very careful to have very clean wines. It's expressive, very young, undeveloped and fresh.

The 2020 Louro is a little riper than the 2019 and has a softer palate. The process was the same as always, fermentation in 3,500-liter French oak foudres, where the wine matured with lees for four months. It has 14.1% alcohol with a pH of 3.26 and 6.6 grams of acidity. It feels very young and a little closed, reductive perhaps. It's quite fruit-driven, and there is a sensation of a little more ripeness here, more balsamic. It's quite round and gentle but with a nice mineral background. This feels undeveloped, but it should improve with a little more time in bottle. 175,000 bottles were produced. The wine was bottled between May and June 2021 from a single master blend.

I had already tasted the 2019 Louro, but I tasted it again next to the other wines from 2019 and the whole 2020 vintage for context. It has to be the finest Louro to date, from one of the finest vintages for Palacios. It fermented in 3,500-liter oak foudres, where the wine matured with lees for four months. It's not a shy white at 14% alcohol, but the low pH (3.19) and high acidity (6.75 grams of tartaric acid per liter) mean a lot of freshness and therefore good balance. This always has a small percentage of Treixadura, around 4% this year, and in 2019, Treixadura reached 14% alcohol. Treixadura is a very aromatic and balsamic grape, and that small percentage is clearly noticeable in the aromatics, which gives Louro a very different profile from AS Sortes, more herbal and balsamic. The wine shows the freshness from the year and a salty finish coupled with the electricity from the granite. Delicious. It's evolving very slowly. 180,000 bottles produced. It was bottled during April and May 2020.

Peach, quince and lime flavors mingle with notes of lemon cream, heather and grapefruit in this expressive white. The texture is broad, but crisp acidity keeps this focused. Drink now. 1,098 cases imported.??–TM??Region: Spain / Valdeorras Select to Add