2022 Casa Castillo Pie Franco

The 2022 Pie Franco has a slightly paler color than the Las Gravas, a more perfumed nose and more elegance. This is a very reliable and consistent wine, which seems to cushion the effect of the year quite well. This is more perfumed than the rest of its siblings and has lower alcohol than any of the others, with a contained 14% alcohol. It has a medium to full-bodied palate with abundant, fine-grained tannins. They harvested a little earlier and were very careful with the extraction, and it clearly paid off and achieved the elegant and more ethereal profile even in a very warm, dry, challenging year like 2022. This is my favorite of the 2022s together with the Monastrell. It was a very low yielding year; from close to 12 hectares, they produced 3,800 liters of wine, and they finally bottled close to 5,000 bottles. It was bottled in June 2024.