Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2025 #65

When Wine Spectator released its 2025 Top 100, one of the year’s most talked-about entries wasn’t a celebrated Napa Cab or a grand cru Burgundy—it was a Garnacha from the high slate plateaus of Calatayud, in the heart of Aragón. The 2023 Las Pizarras Fabla #506 is ripe, mineral, and lifted, with a story as compelling as what’s in the bottle.

The vineyards of the Las Pizarras range sit on slate and quartzite deposited by glacier activity during the Tertiary period—stony, nutrient-poor terrain with exceptional drainage that forces bush-trained Garnacha vines to work hard for every drop of moisture. “Las Pizarras” is Spanish for “the slates,” and the name is earned: it’s this geology that gives the wines their mineral spine and their lift.

Winemaker Carlos Rubén favors gentle extraction and a restrained hand with oak. The Fabla is the range’s regional blend—80% Garnacha and 20% Syrah, fermented at cool temperatures to preserve varietal freshness, with only 30% of the wine spending three months in barrel before bottling. The result leads with fruit and slate, not wood.

“Fabla” is an ancient language spoken in the mountains of northern Aragón for over a thousand years—today only about 12,000 people still use it. A deliberate nod to something rare and worth preserving. The “506” is more literal: the number of the tank where this particular blend was first assembled.