Weird Grape Spotlight: Tinta de Toro from Bodega Matsu

I have a weakness for airport duty free shops, especially in Europe. I can’t help it. I know the prices aren’t great compared to buying them outside the airport, but they’re deeply discounted compared to buying the same ones in the U.S., and it’s a good way to get wines I can’t easily find in the U.S. without having to check a bag. Fresh from the high of the Valencia Marathon and flying back from Madrid, I loaded up on whatever looked good, especially if I’d never seen it in an American wine shop. One bottle was literally staring me in the face: Bodega Matsu’s 2020 “El Recio” Toro DO.

I’m drinking it right now while cooking the NYT’s garlic bean broth thingy. The wine pours a bright ruby, with cherry and pencil shavings on the nose. For drinkers getting tired of over-oaked Spanish wines, this one wins for subtlety. While powerful, its fruit ripeness is more than balanced by its acidity, and the prominent tannins are nonetheless fine-grained and smooth. Its ABV is a hot 14.5%; while the alcohol content makes its presence known, it’s well integrated and not unwelcome. The finish is long, with savory dark chocolate, baking spice, and pepper notes. The words “focus” and “precision” get thrown around a lot, but I think they apply to this wine. For lack of a better word, this wine demonstrates restraint.

Grown on 90-year-old vines, El Recio is made from 100% Tinta de Toro, a variant of Tempranillo grown (unsurprisingly) almost nowhere but Toro. Toro’s soil is sandy, which means its vines were some of the only ones in Europe to resist phylloxera, which, like Anakin Skywalker, hates sand. Many Tinta de Toro vines are ungrafted—that is, grown on their own roots rather than phylloxera-resistant American rootstock. (It’s debatable whether that affects a wine’s flavor, but some believe it does.) El Recio is hand-harvested, macerated for 14 days, fermented in concrete tanks with native yeast, and aged for 14 months in second-use French and eastern European oak barrels.

You can get it for about $25 online in the United States. I paid about €13 at the airport. Either price is a bargain.

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