Bouza Reserva Canelones Tannat 2022

Garnet red color with petrol highlights. Very expressive in the nose with black fruits, mulberries, cassis and raisins over an elegant smokey background. Velvety but marked tannins. Balanced and persistent final bouquet. This is a textbook Uruguayan Tannat with tremendous purity and sense of place, and is the bottling used by most wine educators around the world when teaching students about the category.

Grapes are sourced from three maritime-influenced sites: Melilla, a fairly cool climate site that surrounds the winery; Las Violetas, a warmer, clay driven site about 15 miles north of the winery; and Pan de Azucar, one of the country’s premier coastal vineyards and a site that sits below the world renowned rock formation of the same name, located about an hour east of Montevideo. Vineyard rows in Melilla are uniquely topped with two feet of pink granite from a local quarry to collect and radiate additional heat for their grapes. All vines are dry-farmed for maximum depth of flavor in the finished wine. Gravity flow winemaking. Aged 13 months in French and American oak.

Juan and Elisa Bouza established their winery in 2000 by restoring a historic winery originally built in the 1940s by Numa Pesquera in the outskirts of Montevideo. Over the last ten years, Bouza has established itself as Uruguay’s most critically acclaimed producer. Bouza’s winemaker, Dr. Eduardo Boido, is considered Uruguay’s authority on all things Tannat.