ARTUKE
You’ll notice the word elegant appears three times on the banner, and rightly so. These are wines of perfume, clarity, and focus. Enjoy great pricing across the line-up, and take a further 7% off when you mix six or more.
Just 6 dot points that introduce a great and celebrated Rioja producer of world-class wines!
- - Artuke wines from Rioja Alavesa are a revelation. These are bush-vine tempranillo (predominantly) reds made from mostly very old vines in a pure and simple way that gives fruity, clean, quite powerful yet vibrant reds that are like no other Rioja wines I have tasted. You are more likely to taste "fresh raspberry and cherry" than old leather!
- - The brothers Arturo and Kike de Miguel (whose names combine to make Artuke) run the show and have 22 ha now, built on the vines and work of parents and grandparents.
- - Artuke manages 22 hectares across Baños de Ebro and Ábalos areas, just north of the Ebro river and about 110kms due south of Bilbao. This Alavesa sub-region is made up of limestone, whereas (for example) nearby Alta is more ferruginous red sandy and loam soils.
- - They have 4 single-plot, very complex and age-worthy reds, and some classy blends that include a beautifully bright and intense younger-release Rioja (that has deep flavour for an under-$30 red!).
- These reds come from very low-yielding vines giving intense flavours, are mostly fermented as whole berries in cement vats and aged in 600lt barrels and 3500lt foudres, so no new oak flavour is found in the wines.
- The 32 small plots are run organically, and the old-school, long ageing in barrels is eschewed so the wines are not a part of the traditional classification system and the focus is on vitality, density and purity.
