Vineyard Road Day 3: Viña Zorzal Garnacha Tinto e Blanco
I’m excited to bring back a pair of wines that have quickly become staples in my life, now offered for the third vintage in a row: the 2024 Viña Zorzal Garnacha Tinto and 2024 Viña Zorzal Garnacha Blanco.
Imported by Vineyard Road, these wines continue to overdeliver in a way that’s increasingly rare. Viña Zorzal has firmly established itself as one of the best value producers in the world, and these latest releases only reinforce that reputation. The story begins in Navarra, where the Sanz brothers farm a 40-hectare estate composed largely of ancient, wild Garnacha vines. These old vineyards are the backbone of their work, producing fruit with remarkable character. Rather than chasing volume , the focus here is entirely on quality. So many family farms during the Franco regime and continuing until the the 90s and early 2000s had beautiful viticultural land that were forced to be focused on volume without having a care for quality.
Equally important is how these wines are made. The brothers have committed themselves to traditional, hands-on methods in both vineyard and cellar. Farming is challenging on these hillside vineyards with friable soil, and is therefore very intentional in every step. The winemaking is intentionally restrained, allowing the personality of the fruit and site to take center stage. The grapes are not allowed, through careful canopy management mostly, to attain high alcohols and they maintain racy acidity. Old vines and long-term dry farming do help with that as well. Both Bianco and Tinto Garnacha in unpracticed hands can come off as overly-alcoholic, out of balance wines, and it is refreshing to find a producer in this category of these wines such as Vina Zorzal that are, well, literally refreshing.
The Garnacha Tinto is everything you want in a red at this level: juicy, energetic, and layered with red fruit, subtle spice, and a refreshing lift that makes it incredible. The Garnacha Blanco, meanwhile, is a standout in its own right—bright, and mineral-driven, offering far more complexity than its price would suggest. I have a personal preference for the white now for several vintages in a row.
These wines have become regular offers for a reason. Vintage after vintage, the Sanz brothers continue to deliver bottles that punch well above their weight, combining authenticity, drinkability, and serious value. Quite simply, they are must-haves.
92+ Points, Wine Advocate
"The young and juicy varietal 2024 Garnacha was produced with grapes from different villages—Corella, Cintruénigo, Fitero and Lerga, that last one included since 2020—from a cooler place that adds lower pH, more freshness and complexity to the blend. It was a low-yielding year but with more rain. They did a soft extraction in stainless steel using 10% full clusters and indigenous yeasts, achieving a wine with moderate alcohol (13.38%), good freshness (pH 3.39) and 5.4 grams of acidity. It's very primary and fruit-driven with tons of aromatic herbs, juicy, clean and easy to drink, very pleasant, with an extra spark of freshness. 118,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in February 2025."
93+ Points, Wine Advocate
"They picked the grapes for the varietal white 2024 Garnacha Blanca quite early to produce the fresh profile they like, with 12.6% alcohol, a pH of 3.18 and 6.45 grams of acidity, thus avoiding the heavy and alcoholic wines Garnacha Blanca can produce when picked too late. They used grapes from the village of Fitero to ferment it in stainless with indigenous yeasts, and it matured mostly in concrete but also in a 2,000-liter Stockinger foudre, a 1,500-liter used foudre, five new 500-liter French oak barrels and two 700-liter concrete eggs. It's super pale and more reductive, flinty, still very young and serious. It has a clean, elegant and precise nose, with good freshness and less volume, sharper and precise, more vertical, with great finesse. It makes you salivate. They are moving toward more time in bottle and less in wood/concrete for their wines in general. They really like 2024 for whites. This wine really transcends the price. 23,200 bottles were produced. It was bottled in July 2025."