Dominio de Tares Baltos 2016

The first red wine of the Spring Wines tasting by colourfulwines.com hosted at Tomevinos.com Barrio Salamanca. Red wine is not something I usually associate with sunny weather, except of course the classic Tinto de Verano, but I have tried Mencia wines from Bierzo before and they can be delightfully fruity, so this could work.

Apparently the Bierzo region is similar to Burgundy in that small parcels of land are passed from Father to Son, so you don’t tend to get the large wineries. Each wine is very specific to the fields owned by the winery.

This wine is a medium intensity purple colour with a scent of jammy raspberry and cranberry and perhaps a hint of anis.

It is a dry wine with relatively low tannins and acidity, a good finish and a light body. It has the jammy fruit flavour but not as much as promised in the scent. In fact it is very light in flavour for a red wine. In that respect it is an ideal spring wine.

This is a nice wine. Trouble is I went to this tasting after a week in Rioja drinking Gran Reservas and the contrast was a bit of a shock. Having said that I wouldn’t drink a Gran Reserva on a hot Madrid Summer day as it would be too heavy, but could drink this wine.