Pingus PSI 2020

PSI 2020  WA93
Dominio de Pingus
Ribera del Duero

Grape: 100% Tempranillo

PSI is an outstanding offering from Peter Sisseck in Ribera del Duero. He is best known for his top tier wine Pingus ($949) and the Flor de Pingus ($108) but the PSI is for the rest of us.  He works closely with a cadre of grape growers to help protect various plots of various very old vine Tempranillo.  They work primarily organically or biodynamically and the resulting wine shows an elegance and finesse that is atypical of the powerful wines of the region.

PSI is the 23rd letter in the Greek alphabet and is the name of Peter Sisseck's (of the coveted Pingus and Flor de Pingus) utopian wine from Ribera del Duero. Peter has sought out the best independent vineyard growers in Ribera and is incentivizing them to improve viticultural practices and shun chemicals, lower yields and practice biodynamics by paying them increasingly for the fruit as they improve. The result is a "give back" to the region wine that also expresses the "soul" of Ribera.
 
WA93 – Luis Gutierrez
In 2020, he reached the target he set for himself when PSI first started, to produce around 300,000 bottles (it's actually 350,000 bottles). The volume of the 2020 PSI is something that's important, as it has availability and affordability, which is necessary when based on quality, purchasing only grapes from old vines (they use 7,000 plots for this volume!). So, they also started purchasing some of those vineyards in 2022 (they think they need 200 hectares to keep the volume, so the aim is to own maybe half of it).

Peter Sisseck remarked that we have to remember 2020 was a warm year, but with the high content of limestone in the soils, the wine has kept very good freshness. They harvested early, before the rain, and they also used some 5% to 10% Garnacha (they could use up to 25%, according to regulations) in the blend to lower the pH of the wine. Below 3.8, he thinks, the wines from the zone are very angular and hard if it's only Tempranillo, so Garnacha (which doesn't have as much tannins as Tempranillo) can help with that; but the difficulty is finding Garnacha grapes, so they are considering planting some Garnacha for the future. The bottled wine has all that the sample promised—clean and healthy aromas, floral and elegant, aromatic and with good freshness. The palate is medium-bodied, with elegant tannins, pleasant and easy to drink. 350,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in July 2022.