2020 Dominio del Challao Garnacha Rioja

By twenty-three, Manu Michelini had talked his way into the cellars of French legends: Jean-Marc Roulot in Meursault, Clarisse Ramonet in Chassagne, and the Clape family in Cornas. Then he walked into Rioja and made a debut The Wine Advocate scored 95, comparing it to Valmira, the cult Grenache that sells for around $400.

Wine is the family trade. His parents are two of Argentina's most celebrated winemakers, and Michelini is the closest thing South American wine has to a dynasty. But this project is his own. In the Basque hills of Rioja Alavesa he partnered with Carlos Fernández, a grower rooted there for generations, and claimed a single hectare of Garnacha planted in the 1960s. The plot is called Las Ginebras, and it is the highest-elevation Grenache vineyard in all of Rioja, cooler even than the famous mountain sites of Gredos.

The winemaking is pure artisan nerve: whole clusters trodden by foot, wild yeasts, a thirty-five-day maceration, and twenty months resting in big used oak. What emerges turns Rioja upside down. The wine is pale, perfumed, and delicate, all wild strawberry, rose petal, and white pepper, with fine, incisive tannins and cool mountain freshness at just 12.5%.

They filled only 3,082 bottles, and it's squarely in its prime. A 95-point debut this small doesn't wait.