Dominio de Pingus

Dominio de Pingus was started in 1995 by Peter Sisseck, a Danish oenologist who had come to Ribera del Duero to run Hacienda Monasterio at Pesquera de Duero and stayed. Pingus itself comes from two small parcels of old Tempranillo near the village of La Horra: Barrosso, two and a half hectares of vines over sixty-five years old, and San Cristóbal, a hectare and a half of vines over seventy. Yields average around twelve hectolitres per hectare, roughly a third of what most of the region takes off, and fewer than five hundred cases are usually made. The company is registered at Quintanilla de Onésimo, in Valladolid province.

Robert Parker tasted the first vintage, the 1995, and called it "one of the greatest and most exciting wines I have ever tasted". It was released at two hundred dollars a bottle. Then, in November 1997, the ship carrying seventy-five cases of it to America went down near the Azores, the price roughly doubled, and Pingus became the wine everybody had an opinion about and almost nobody had drunk. Thirty years on it is still one of the most expensive reds in Spain.

Pingus itself is made in tiny quantity and priced accordingly, and it is rationed rather than sold. The other wines made by the same hands are where I think most of the interest actually sits.

Flor de Pingus is the estate's second wine, drawn from a wider ring of old-vine plots around La Horra and made at around four thousand cases a year. It is farmed the same way, made in the same cellar by the same people, and it is a wine in its own right rather than a consolation prize. Those vineyards have been worked biodynamically since 2005; the Pingus parcels since 2000.

PSI is a different thing again, and worth understanding before you buy it. Sisseck set it up in 2006, with the first vintage in 2007, as a joint project with local growers. The point was to pay properly for fruit from old, low-yielding Tempranillo vines that were being pulled out across Ribera del Duero because nobody would pay enough to keep them in the ground. It is a conservation project as much as a wine, it is made in real volume from hundreds of small plots, and pound for pound it is the most interesting thing the group makes.

A mature vintage of Flor de Pingus is a different proposition from a current release. It is bought in and priced as mature wine, and that is worth understanding before you spend the money. Peter Sisseck's other project is Château Rocheyron in Saint-Émilion, so if his way of working suits you there is somewhere else to go.

If you are starting here, start with the PSI.