July 2025 Tinto Club

Embruix De Vall Llach 2022 Priorat Regular Price: $31.99 Club Price: $27.19 Buy Now

Long time members of our wine club will remember this producer, but year after year we cannot help ourselves from booking them for our Tinto Club. The 2022 vintage was no different; upon tasting it, it felt like we must absolutely include it for July’s selection. For the uninitiated, Vall Llach is a storied and established producer of Priorat, and is absolutely a cornerstone for the regions as a whole. Their vineyards have been practicing viticulture for over a century now, but the contemporary estate was founded in 1990 by famous singer Lluís Llach and his notary, Enric Costa. Today the winery is run by Costa’s son, Albert Costa.

The estate is located in the small mountainous town of Porrera. Frequent red wine enthusiasts who shop with us may recognize that one of our most popular Priorats, ‘Black Slate’ by Cal Pla, also hails from this particular valley. One way to describe this month’s selection would be a Black Slate dialed up a notch. But first we need to talk about a couple things that Vall Llach does really well. 

The first is viticultural management. At the core of Vall Llach estate are a few blocks of steep, old vine Garnacha and Carineña, aged from 60-90years. The fruit from these plots go into the wineries high end bottles as well this month’s Embruix. Put a pin in these steep slopes, we’ll talk about them in a bit. To round out the winery’s offering, the estate also tends to some younger vines on more flat parcels. Longtime readers will be well aware that old vines produce more complex, concentrated fruit, but in far less quantities. In pragmatic business acumen, Vall Llach balances what would otherwise be very expensive fruit with the more generous and juicy fruit from their younger parcels. 

Revisiting the pin above, we thought we’d take a moment to talk about what mountainous steep slopes do to the character of its resultant wine. Priorat, is itself a mountainous region whose prized vineyards are often from these perilous pissares or steep, terraced slopes. In regard to water, the slopes encourage excellent drainage, which restricts the wine from creating overly juicy, plump berries. This forces the plant to bear smaller and fewer clusters and grapes. The high altitude, which invites hot days and freezing nights, also puts pressure on the fruit, causing them to develop literal thick skins to protect the delicate fruit inside. To generalize, mountainous environs such as Priorat often produce dark concentrated fruit with a lot of structure. Embruix, while a youthful and juicy expression of Priorat, still showcases these classic traits. 

The wine itself is composed of 28% Merlot, 27% Grenache, 21% Carignan, 12% Syrah, and 12% Cabernet Sauvignon, with the French grapes inviting generous roundness to the wine. On the nose, the wine is overflowing with dark berry notes. Blackberry, raspberry, mulberry and boysenberry make this wine dark, concentrated, but not overbearing. On the taste, licorice, graphite, savory herbs and wood notes provide a warming roundness to the wine. Overall, this wine is fruit driven and fresh, with good nuance and a firm, grippy texture. Enjoy with stewed meat, barbecue, or weeknight red meat dishes.

Señorio De P. Pecina 2014 Gran Reserva Rioja Regular Price: $54.99 Club Price: $46.74 Buy Now

Front matter: all images courtesy Hermanos Pecina (website, instagram).

We’ve been to Rioja multiple times, and in each visit, one truth keeps surfacing: the wines we love the most (the ones we come home talking about the most) almost always come from La Rioja Alta, and more specifically, from the vineyards surrounding the village of San Vicente de la Sonsierra. It’s not the modern architecture, flashy, big estate part of Rioja, but it’s where the magic grounded in history happens.  Grapes from old vines growing in a patchwork of limestone hills, Atlantic breezes, and a deep-rooted culture of winemaking that doesn’t chase trends all coalesce into that “je ne sais quoi” that makes us go oohh and ahh not just at scenery like that below, but at all the wines that come from it. 

Bodegas Hermanos Peciña captures everything we admire about this place. Founded in 1992 by Pedro Peciña after decades working at La Rioja Alta (yes, that La Rioja Alta), the winery sticks to a traditional path: estate-grown grapes (more on that below), organic farming, native yeasts, and long, slow aging in used American oak. They rack every barrel by hand, every six months, the old-fashioned way, not because it’s nostalgic, but because it makes better wine.  

And, since winemaking technique means nothing if it's not applied to good fruit, a closer look at their vineyards is very important.

Peciña’s vineyards are a study in balance — between altitude and aspect, tradition and precision. Spread across 50 hectares around San Vicente de la Sonsierra, each parcel brings something distinct to the table. Finca Iscorta, the oldest and most emblematic, is a 50-year-old bush-trained vineyard where Tempranillo, Garnacha, and Viura ripen slowly on a north-facing slope at 500 meters. From there, the vineyards climb even higher: Salinillas sits over 600 meters in the foothills of the Toloño Mountains — the western edge of Rioja DOCa — delivering the acidity and freshness that define Peciña’s style. El Codo, a dramatic, stony hillside vineyard ranging from 485 to 575 meters, yields deeply concentrated fruit from its stressed, well-drained soils. La Liende, La Peña, and Llano each add their own layers, from the water-retentive floodplain soils that keep vines digging deep, to the high-altitude limestone plots that offer structure, spice, and purity. Even their youngest planting, La Veguilla, along the banks of the Ebro, contributes bright, floral energy to the blend. Finally, La Tejera’s Garnacha and Valseca’s Tempranillo — grown near the winery in clay-limestone soils with good wind exposure — round out the picture with finesse, tannic grip, and lift. These are vineyards with personality, shaped by place, farmed with care, and blended to capture the soul of Sonsierra.

We keep returning to these bottles year after year because they’re honest. They’re elegant without being precious. They show the power of restraint and the beauty of time. Whether it’s their Crianza, Reserva, or Gran Reserva, Peciña delivers Rioja that’s timeless, grounded, and completely compelling.  While we often make fun of their overly staid, plain, and excessively old fashioned serif font labels (which honestly really contributes to the wine getting passed by), it is one of the best picks on our shelves and precisely because of said label it’s one of our best-kept secrets.

The 2014 Gran Reserva is the top of the mountain, metaphorically in Peciña’s lineup, but also in the classic Rioja tradition. It's the same 95/3/2 blend of Tempranillo, Graciano and Garnacha as the other wines in their lineup.  It's aged four years in well-used American oak and three more in bottle before release, making this wine elegant, quietly powerful, and deeply rooted in place and time. While all three of the Pecinas wowed us, this one floored us.

The wine is not shy right at opening, but it after breathing a bit that it starts to really show you what it's got.  Give it 30 minutes and it absolutely blooms into a bouquet: dried cherry and orange peel, old cedar, fine leather, and that signature Rioja blend of spice and dust. The palate is silky and weightless, yet still firm in its structure, with just enough acidity to keep it lifted and alive. The finish is long, quiet, and composed, the kind that makes you pause before the next sip.

2014 was a slightly warmer vintage, giving this Gran Reserva just a touch more generosity than some years. It’s beautifully resolved right now but in no rush.  This wine is a masterclass in patience, from vineyard to cellar to glass.  The food pairings are limitless (save seafood), and I'd have this with red meat or maybe simply with light crackers and a very high quality paté.