2001 Flor de Pingus Ribera del Duero 14.0%
Since Brazil is three hours ahead of EST at this time of the year, I get to post notes on my dinner wine, if it hasn't made me too sleepy, while EST inhabitants are still sitting down to their's...
My first bottle of this (a year ago) was superb, the second and third (in subsequent months) were so-so, and now the fourth is back to the level of the first. Very fine nose, combining waves of leather, mocha, vanilla, and prunes, dabbed with a touch of funk. Excellent acidity, attractive mouthfeel, well-integrated alcohol, fine tannins, the only drawback is a shorter-than-expected finish. But, as the bottle empties at an alarming rate, sheer pleasure takes over and the analytically apprehending mode is replaced by a sensuously surrendering mode. Before I know it, the cortex is relegated to its arriviste insignificance and the reptilian brain, suffused with primeval certainties, assumes control of operations. Paraphrasing Rumi, the limbic system whispers: "beyond good and bad wine there is a field; meet me there!"