Susana Esteban Special Edition 2018

Alicante Bouschet (60%), Touriga Nacional (20%) and old mixed vines. Deep on the nose, with black fruit, black pepper, eucalyptus and the faintest cinnamon stick. On the palate it manages to be silky and textured at once, with chewy fruit and a chocolatey side that invites the next glass. With excellent natural freshness, it holds up exemplarily in the glass.

Luis Gutiérrez:

The 2018 Special Edition is a very powerful red, made mostly from Alicante Bouschet (usually used for the Procura cuvée), from a much lower-yielding year. Susana liked it a lot, so she put it in used 225-litre barrels (five barrels), where it stayed for three years. The idea was to bottle it pure, but she blended it with 7% old vines and 7% Touriga Nacional. This is a very powerful, old-style Alicante, like the wines of the past: wines to age for a long time in bottle. It has 14.5% alcohol and great freshness and acidity. I recommend patience with this wine. She told me it improves in bottle. I believe this could be a 40-year wine, something that apparently happens once a decade; in other years the Alicante is much more rustic. 1,470 bottles were produced. It was bottled in December 2021. No Procura Tinto was made in 2018 because those grapes are in this wine.