Dominio de Pingus ‘Flor de Pingus’ 2021

Why is this Wine so Yummy?

About Dominio de Pingus

Pingus was established in 1995 by Peter Sisseck, Danish-born and French-trained, with significant experience in Bordeaux and Sonoma. Simi Winery and Chateau Landiras (run by his uncle Peter Vinding) were his winemaking testing ground, beyond which he also has qualifications in agricultural engineering. Peter has been working in Ribera del Duero since 1990. A brief-seeming consultancy gig resulted in a deep fascination with the untapped potential of this extreme and contradictory region, which has become very much ‘home’. Peter  is involved in a number of projects in Ribera, and also runs his own Bordeaux domaine.

Peter was acquired as winemaker-manager by the original owners of a then-new project in Ribera del Duero. Hacienda Monasterio was an ambitious Bordeaux-styled estate purchased and planted from scratch to Tinto Fino plus French and Italian varieties in the Valladolid sector in the west of the DO. The Monasterio project has struggled from day 1, never really reaching its ambitions. The wines are still in production, but are very expensive and not as good as they need to be. Peter has since ‘re-done’ the idea behind Hacienda Monasterio, getting it right by building it from the ground up himself … the relatively young Quinta Sardonia estate succeeds marvellously in realising Monasterio’s aim of an estate using mixed Tempranillo+Bordeaux varieties. But that’s a separate story (please read elsewhere on our website to get the low-down on Peter’s other two ventures in the region, Quinta Sardonia and PSI).

While other Spanish wines have achieved international recognition, Pingus is one of the very few that has joined the ranks of the world’s most coveted wines. Like Coche-Dury’s Corton-Charlemagne or Giacomo Conterno’s Monfortino, Pingus is known and revered wherever great wine is discussed.

Frustrated from the ownership level, Peter eventually severed ties with Monasterio, by which time Dominio de Pingus was well and truly alive. Monasterio did, however, give him the needed introduction to the grassroots (well, vine roots, actually) of Ribera del Duero. In seeking to get Monasterio right, he refused the usual way of the flying or consulting winemaker (importing certainties and technologies from elsewhere). Rather, he got as close to the ground as he could to see what really made Ribera del Duero tick. Not surprisingly, soil, site and viticultural stock were his key research interests. This ‘blow-in’ ended up doing more to identify and understand authentic Tinto Fino in Ribera del Duero than had previously been achieved.

The film below is in Spanish. You can add auto-translated sub-tittles by clicking ⚙️ selecting Auto-translate and the language of your choice.

In the Vineyard

Tempranillo AKA Tinto Fino

Tempranillo’s local name is Tinto Fino and is also sometimes called Tinto del Pais. It is not Tempranillo by another name, but a distinct familial strain, as is Tinta de Toro, the version of ‘Tempranillo’ native to Toro, west along the Ribera of Rio Douro. These familial distinctions are more significant than clonal variations, which occur at a local level. So, sniffing around the old plantings, and talking to the old-timers of Ribera during the early 90s, Peter did his own work in identifying Tinto Fino, distinguishing it from ‘Tempranillo’, and identifying several key clonal variations within the local Tinto Fino. Likewise he combed the various sub-regions looking at different soil and micro-climates and eventually located what he thought was the ideal combination of site, clonal selection of Tinto Fino and old bush vines pruned ‘en vaso’. Three ancient plots near to one another in the ‘La Horra’ zone between Roa and Aranda del Duero in the central part of Ribera del Duero were acquired and became the basis of Pingus (one nowadays is the base of Flor de Pingus). Similar plots constitute Flor de Pingus, and more lately the regional project PSI. Altitude is 800-850 metres.

The wines of Dominio de Pingus are essentially acts of vine husbandry. The gnarled old vines have been carefully husbanded back to health – the trunks straightened, lowered, and pruned back to 1-2 buds per stump. Yields tend to an incredibly low 9 hl/ha. “Tinto Fino is important,” he explains. “A lot of cuttings of Tempranillo have come in from Rioja, so not all vineyards in Ribera del Duero are Tinto Fino. There is a difference. All the vines in my plots are very old. They have never been fertilised nor treated with pesticides and all grow following the traditional en vaso system. They are perfect.”

The old vines of Ribera del Duero’s native strain of the Tempranillo family are rare, and becoming more so. In 1990, there were only 9000 hectares under vine in the DO and 6000 of these were old Tinto Fino bush-vines planted en vaso. Nowadays, there are 22000 ha and only 4000 of these are old locals. Worse, much of the new industrial planting is ‘Tempranillo’ grown on trellis – higher-yielding, easy-to-grow generic clones from Rioja. Ribera del Duero is being de-natured just as it becomes popular … and the ‘Conejo Regulador’ (the official bunny of the big companies, the CRDO or Consejo Regulador DO Ribera del Duero) sits silently in observation, taking his tithes and keeping it zipped. I attempted to interview him on the matter and he proved an adept at shape-shifting-refusal to address the point.

Thus, Pingus (and PSI) are not just bottles of amazing booze – they are a regional-cultural legacy, a heritage conservation project.

In the Winery

Pingus

Pingus is based on two clos vineyards of great age and perfect natural balance, pretty much adjacent to one another affect an ‘estate’ of 4.5 hectares just sout-west of La Horra on the way to Roa. ‘Barroso’ is old gravel-sands over silt and calcareous bedrock near the Duero, and higher up ‘San Cristobal’ is a south-west facing clay slope. Peter actually treats them as five separate parcels made in 5 old wood Tinas (2000 litre foudre), then aged as per Flor. One of these, ‘Amelia’ is a small ungrafted section of San Cristobal (otherwise on Riparia rootstocks) which yields a single barrel. Barroso yields deeper, lighter, long and finesseful fruit, compared to the fuller-blockier fruit from the gravel-silt slope of San Cristobal, planted around 1910 (the rest were planted in 1929).

Around 500 dozen are produced. Part of the fruit is de-stemmed by hand and goes through an individual berry selection; some of the fruit is selected for a version of whole-bunch fermentation, whereby exemplary parts of the bunch are selected and cut for fermentation with stems. The natural yeast fermentations are cultures selected from the two Pingus vineyards and then inoculated across all fermentations.

Flor de Pingus

Flor is a village wine from 18 parcels across 21 hectares and various soil types in and around La Horra, between Roa and Aranda de Deuro. Each parcel is fermented separately by indigenous yeasts selected from the Pingus vineyards. 16 small stainless steel foudre are then blended, go through malo in barrique and are then aged 16 months or so in 30% new barrels, and the rest 1-3 years old.

The 2021 Vintage at Dominio de Pingus

I met with Peter Sisseck to taste the bottled 2021s and the 2022s that are about to be bottled. 2021 was a dry year after a rainy 2020 (a year of mildew, botrytis and Covid!), and he noticed the change of climate so decided they have to change viticulture. He has changed to higher yields—20 hectoliters per hectare, which is still very low but higher compared with the 12 in the beginning—and an earlier harvest, compared with the initial 1995, when he harvested in early October. Today, it’s impossible to do that or you get 20% alcohol. He now harvests all the grapes in September, and he believes he has gained freshness in the wines. Pingus is still the same vines from 1929, where the individual dead vines are replaced with their own massal selection, so the average age of the vines is not all from 1929.

Flor de Pingus is now 100% from La Horra, where there was a land consolidation when they ripped up 60 hectares of vines and there was good land available. So, today he has 35 hectares for Flor de Pingus, including 12 to 15 hectares that they planted in the last few years. It’s all head-pruned with echalás, with an individual post per plant, the way he finds works for him, planting 5,000 vines per hectare (at one by two meters) to work with very small tractors. In 2021, following some of the leading producers in Burgundy, he decided to not cut off the shoots which avoids the development of secondary bunches and stresses the plant. The plants grow to 2.5 meters, and the vassal leaves don’t get dry. If you cut off, the vassal leaves get dry. He’s going to try something similar with the old Pingus vines.

The other thing he discovered was Garnacha, something that comes from PSI, a natural way to lower the pH (the same as the Cabernet Sauvignon he used at Hacienda Monasterio). So, he planted also some 5% Garnacha in the Flor de Pingus vineyards, and the two varieties are fermented together. In 2006 and 2007, the wines had higher alcohol (15% to 15.5%), but there’s more extraction with higher alcohol the more you extract from the wine and from the barrels. Those wines are evolving better than he expected, but he prefers to keep the alcohol at around 14%.

2021 was warm and dry, with some peaks in July that were really high, but then the average temperatures in 2022 and 2023 were maybe higher. The 2021s were bottled in June/July 2023, and the 2022s should be bottled in June/July 2024. The alcohol levels are all very similar for both vintages, around 14% (he tries not to reach 14.5% if possible).

For Flor, there’s some 20% new barrels and now some new 6,000-liter oak vats to vinify and, in the future, also age the wines. For Pingus, there’s no change—it’s already 100% second-use barrels (from Flor and PSI).

As for 2022, the year of heat and drought made them think that climate change was really here. They harvested starting on September 5, very early, and finished before many had started. But the wine delivers beyond the expectations; they are rounder and gentler wines that are more fruit-driven, peachy and ripe but with freshness with energy.

As they have purchased 50 hectares for PSI, they found a small plot on a slope in Peñaranda with a field blend of Tempranillo, Garnacha and Albillo that was planted in the 1960s; he has done some experimental vinifications, and eventually, there might be some new single-vineyard PSI wines. I tasted the wine from that plot, tentatively called Bancal, from 2022. I also sampled a 2022 Blanco, an experimental white made with 100% Albillo from the plants scattered in the old vineyards, produced in a very Burgundian way, with full lees and in new barrels. Both are very impressive.

Luis Gutiérrez, The Wine Advocate

Where in the World is Dominio de Pingus?

Dominio de Pingus located in Quintanilla de Onésimo in the Province of Valladolid with vineyards in La Horra area of the Ribera del Duero in the Castilla y León region of Spain.