El Titán del Bendito 2022

Some bottles carry more than just wine. This one carries a memory.

Back in 2017, a group of friends and I visited Toro on a hot summer afternoon and ended up at Dominio del Bendito. The winery doesn’t have the profile of some of its more famous neighbours — Teso La Monja, Numanthia, or Pintia from the Vega Sicilia group — but it makes wine of equal pedigree, and the welcome we received that evening was something else entirely.

Antony Terryn met us at the bodega on a Saturday evening, first pouring a glass of his clarete to take the edge off the heat. Then he bundled us into his car and drove us out to the vineyards to show us what he was working with. What struck me most was how unforgiving the landscape looked — arid, sun-baked, relentless. The vines, all ungrafted and between 50 and 100-plus years old, grow as low bush vines with almost no shade and very little water. He put it simply: the more the vine suffers, the better the wine. The grapes were tiny, almost raisin-like, but extraordinarily concentrated, with a floral lift that caught me off guard given how brutal the conditions looked.

We went back to the bodega and spent the next three hours working through barrel samples of his full range. Eventually his wife and young child arrived — and that, diplomatically, was that. But not before he opened a bottle of El Titán to share with us.

Opening one now, years later and in very different circumstances — a BBQ with friends in Málaga — it still has that same quality of surprise.

The fruit is dark and dense — blackberry, black plum, a core of something almost jammy — but lifted by a violet florality that keeps it from feeling heavy. Secondary notes of spice, cocoa, vanilla and cedar follow, well-integrated and unhurried. And then there’s the 16.5% alcohol, which should dominate everything and somehow doesn’t. It’s one of the more remarkable tricks this wine pulls off — the concentration and structure absorb it completely.

I decanted for an hour, but the wine kept evolving long after that. The tannins are the most interesting part: fine-grained and almost silky at first, they gradually take on more grip and presence as time passes. This is a wine that rewards patience — open it, pour it, and leave it alone for a while. It will come to you.

Not an everyday bottle. But for the right occasion, with the right people, there are few better.