Caus Lubis 1995

I have written favorably about the 1995 Can Ràfols Dels Caus ";Caus Lubis"; before, but my impressions about the wine a couple of nights ago were a bit different and even more favorable. Rather than issue another technical tasting note, I simply would like to express my wonderment about how this wine, made from the nonindigenous Merlot variety, can so prismatically reflect a part of Spain that I have touched from time to time. Rather than being another Merlot-based, born-to-be-bland Esperanto bottle, this redolent wine simply transports you to a countryside path strewn with fallen carob beans; a farmhouse shed filled with earth encrusted wooden tools, old leather, and burlap bags; a bowl of meaty olives; one’s first decent into a winecellar, damp and a bit dusty but with a slightly invigorating cool ozone blast. Nothing about this wine’s personality seems aimless, let alone spurious. To state that Caus Lubis is a terrior-driven wine misses the point; this wine reveals far more than the La Calma del Ros vineyard from which it comes.