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R. Parker 96/100
"The bottled village red 2022 Corullón was produced with grapes from around 90 different plots and had a short élevage of eight months in barrel. It is 93% Mencía, 4% Jerez (Palomino), 2.5% Alicante Bouschet and 0.5% Gran Negro bottled at 13.5% alcohol. It's floral and aromatic, but compared with the more-austere 2023, it comes through as more generous, riper and a little gentler, with more fruit but with elegance and freshness that nobody expected during the torrid summer and harvest. It keeps the freshness and poise, with fine-grained tannins. 25,392 bottles and some smaller and larger formats produced. It was bottled in August and November 2023, as they had to stop for the harvest.
I tasted the bottled 2022s and barrel samples from 2023 from Descendientes de José Palacios in Bierzo. 2022 was a very challenging year, but surprisingly, the wines are more balanced and better than what they expected. The alcohol is lower than anticipated. It was a very warm and dry summer, and the vines got blocked—or, at least, the alcohol didn't go that high. But the acidity started dropping. Yields were high, and the white grapes were very good; they used a lot of white grapes, almost the maximum allowed, 10% to 12%, when they normally use between 6% and 8% to co-ferment with the reds. The wines are a little rounder and more generous than the 2023s (or 2021s), very approachable and juicy. "
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