2019 Bodegas San Roman Prima

2019 Bodegas San Roman Prima

2019 Bodegas San Roman Prima The 2019 Prima’ bottling from Bodegas San vines range from fifteen to fifty years of age! The cépages includes fifteen percent Garnacha to go along with the Tempranillo, and the wine is fermented with indigenous yeasts and raised in a combination of seventy-five percent French and twenty-five percent American oak vessels for fourteen months prior to bottling. The wine offers up a bit of smoked meat tones from the inclusion of the Garnacha, with scents of dark berries, black cherries, a touch of leather, meaty elements, cigar smoke and spicy new oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, ripe and complex, with a fine core of fruit, ripe, well-integrated tannins and a long, balanced finish that shows a bit of backend heat on the close. This is a very well-made bottle of Toro.

Ripe blue fruit, cola, and floral oil scents pick up notes of licorice and allspice as the wine opens up. Fleshy and seamless in the mouth, offering bitter cherry, boysenberry, and violet pastille flavors enlivened by a spicy nuance.

Fruit of the wood, toffee and clove aromas prepare the taste buds for fruit of the wood, cara- mel, cocoa powder and anisette flavors wrapped in a layer of polished tannins. A nice note of espresso appears on the lingering finish.

The first time I tasted Prima, I was blown away. It was the end of December 2004 and I was beat. We had just finished up a busy holiday season and I was cooked. One of my favorite Spanish importers Aurelio Cabastrero called saying that he had to see me. He had this incredible wine and I had to try it. With apprehension I said yes but I was not into it. He came by that afternoon and he had a Winemaker with him and his two sons. The wine was from a region called Toro in Spain and the we tasted was Prima. The wine absolutely floored me. I taste a lot of wine and once in a while you taste a wine that you instantly know is an absolute winner. Prima was that kind of wine. I could hardly hide my pleasure with the wine. We had to negotiate a price. I can now tell you that the Winemaker I met that day was the great Mariano Garcia. Mr. Garcia is one of the greatest Winemakers of our time. He had made 28 vintages of Spain’s First Growth Vega Sicilia, Spain’s most famous red wine. Mr. Garcia had decided to leave Vega Sicilia to make wine with his two sons in Toro and this was their first offering. We have since learned that the region of Toro is making some of the greatest red wine we have seen in the last five to six years. Robert Parker was recently asked which is the next great red wine region in the world and unequivocally stated that it is Toro. Now back to 2004! I had a chance to buy this wine and I blew it. I told Aurelio I would follow up with him the next day and when I did it was gone. Another house, I will not mention names picked up the whole allocation and I was pissed and I have never forgotten. Prima is one of those insane red wines at the price that when I have it available I always recommend that customers pick them up. Since its release Parker has never given the wine less than 90 pts which brings me to the vintage. The 2019 vintage for Spain is spectacular, the best we have seen since 2016 and 2010. The wines are rich, endowed with superb fruit, drinking gorgeously young but will also age out brilliantly. The 2019 Prima is a definite buy in this great vintage. When you pop a bottle, you will see why.