Bendito Destino
"I implore all wine enthusiasts to taste at least one of these wines. They are exciting, unique and thoroughly mind-blowing." Cheers, Randall.
As the name 'Blessed Destiny' would suggest, the land, the people, and the timing were all somehow meant to align—and did. The project is the work of Terry Kandylis and Guillermo Cruz, two of the most lauded sommeliers in Europe (Fat Duck, 97 Pall Mall, Ledbury etc). With some guidance from Secundino, a local vigneron now in his nineties the pair reclaimed these neglected old vineyards—some perched over 900 metres above sea level.
There is a certain expectation in Ribera del Duero: the wines, like the landscape, often come at you broad-chested and assertive, all sun, stone, and muscle. But the first moment we tasted these wines, we could see that the pitch has shifted.
These are wines of altitude and intuition, built not on extraction but on transparency. The tannins don’t grip; they fan, featherlike. The fruit is present but refracted, almost aerial. There’s a luminosity and almost a Burgundy-like perfume and silkiness to them.
