Modern-styled Spanish red with 94 Miller points

Modern-styled Spanish red with 94 Miller points

I did a quick Google search to find out some more about tonight's wine, but all I could seem to get was Jay Miller's review for the Wine Advocate, where he talks about pain grille, meat, bacon and blueberry, and then dishes out 94 points, which I think for him is a kind of low score, although to me it sounds alarmingly high.
The wine in question is an ambitiously packaged, ambitiously priced modern Spanish red from the Mentrida appellation near Toledo. I find it exciting that producers in regions such as this, which a few years back were making almost exclusively cheap plonk (if they were making wine at all), are now aiming much higher. It has to be good for wine as a whole that this sort of push for high quality from lesser-known regions is taking place around the world.
Jimenez-Landi 'Pielago' 2006 Mentrida, Toledo, SpainBeautifully packaged in a deeply punted Burgundy-shaped bottle, this is an ambitious new-wave Spanish red. The nose shows a bit of alcoholic heat, as well as a slightly baked, caramelly edge, along with lush, pure, sweet raspberry and blackberry fruit. The palate is warm and a little jammy, but with a nice spicy definition to the lush fruit. There's a lot going for this wine - the concentrated sweet, ripe fruit, and the attractive spiciness, as well as the fact that any oak is well in the background. But it has just a little too much 'warmth' to it to justify a higher score. New world in style, which I guess is understandable given the fact that it's very much a warm climate wine, made in a modern way. I'd like to see them aim for more freshness, without losing the concentration. 90/100 (£20 Handford Wines)
Origin information: jamie goode's wine blog