2019 Bodegas Ordonez Triton Tinta de Toro Old Vines Toro 750 ml

This might be one of the only wines we’ve ever encountered that costs so little, yet possesses the old-vine ripeness and lavish power to go toe-to-toe in richness with Napa’s big guns.

The raw materials of this spectacular value—100-year-old vines and poor sandy soils that made this the only part of Spain to resist the phylloxera plague—give this Tempranillo clone incredible depth. Grapes are culled from five plots in the Valladolid province, where vines were planted as far back in 1900 and 1947—none later than 1958!

It’s the genius of Jorge Ordóñez—co-founder of Bodegas Numanthia, one of the few Spanish properties that can truly be mentioned in the same breath as Vega Sicilia—to tame that black stallion character into a seamlessly smooth package that critics Jeb Dunnuck and James Suckling both saw fit to light up with 92-point praise.

The estate’s ancient Tinta de Toro plants (as the native Tempranillo clone is known) look like the kinds of bushes you see in Châteauneuf-du-Pape. In this place of extremes, the temperature reaches into the 90s during the day and drops into the 50s at night, gifting the grapes with lush ripeness yet balancing them with invigorating acidity. The wine then gets spice and polish from a mix of French oak barriques that are between two and four years old.

The result is a wine that will shatter your preconceptions about wines at this price.