Arrocal Seleccion Especial – 2020 (750ml)

93 points Wine Review Online

Bodegas Arrocal 2020 Seleccin Especial is such a silky sexpot of a Tempranillo that few blind tasters will believe it spent 18 months in oak, 50% of it new (even when learning that all the barrels were French). The only way to explain the delightful result must be the quality of the fruit, drawn from the single site Los Astrales vineyard, which was planted nearly 40 years ago. The aromas feature ripe fruit notes much more than ones that are wood-derived, and though there are spice notes that offset the dark cherry fruit beautifully, the fruit stays in the foreground from the first whiff through the last sensory signal in the wines finish. For a 2020 wine to showcase fruit that can already outrun both the tannin and oak load is remarkable, but this wines track record shows that it can improve for at least a decade. By the 10-year mark from now, I worry that my score will look embarrassingly stingy in retrospect. All the Arrocal wines offer excellent value at their various levels, but it is hard not to see this as the sweet spot buy in the lineup.
Michael Franz September 12, 2023

93 points View from the Cellar

The 2020 Seleccin Especial from Bodegas Arrocal is a touch riper than the Crianza bottling this year, tipping the scales at 14.5 percent octane. The vines for this cuve are fully forty- five years of age, farmed organically again, and the wine is raised in fifty percent new oak for eighteen months prior to bottling. Despite the slightly higher octane, the wine is beautifully precise on the nose, offering up a fine blend of plums, red and black cherries, Cuban cigar, a lovely array of spice tones that include a nice touch of savory elements, a fine base of soil and a very refined framing of cedary French oak. On the palate the wine is pure, full-bodied and quite elegant in profile, with excellent mid-palate depth, good soil signature, ripe, chewy tannins and excellent focus on the long, well-balanced and complex finish. This is another excellent wine, but it has some wood tannins to absorb and will need a solid decade in the cellar to soften up. It will be outstanding once it is ready to drink. 2033-2080.
John Gilman – Issue #103 January/February 2023.