Wine of the Week – a stunningly tasty rosé

Vines at Bodegas Sierra Norte, Utiel-Requena.

I simply do not want the summer to end and one way to delay the return to normalcy is to keep drinking rosé wine.

Nothing says summer like a glass of rosé, so if you keep drinking the pink stuff it will keep you in a summery mood and fend off the Autumn gloom. Or that is my hope anyway.

Personally I love rosé as it gives similar refreshment to white wine, has some the fruit of red wine and goes well with almost any food.

Pretty much everywhere makes rosés and the very pale Provençal style of French rosé is particularly fashionable right now. However, I love Spanish wine and think that no one makes rosés quite like the Spanish do. The Spanish historically don’t really like white wine you see and so Rosé traditionally fills that lighter rôle.

Spain is awash with good rosés – or rosado in Spanish – so as long as you avoid the very cheapest you will probably be ok. Spend a bit more though and you often drink something that overdelivers on quality and flavour. I have had so many wonderful Spanish rosés recently, from such varied places as Navarra, Txakoli, Rioja, Alicante, Jumilla and Ribera del Duero amongst others, that it is hard to limit myself to just one. However I tasted one today that really thrilled me, so I thought that I would share it with you.

It comes from a wine region called Utiel-Requena, which is inland from the wonderful city of Valencia. I love that part of Spain, indeed it is my spiritual home as all my life my family have had a house on the coast to the south of Valencia – pronounced Bah-lenthia.

Map of the wine regions of the Comunidad Valenciana. This is one of the 17 autonomous regions of Spain and comprises the Provinces of Alicante, Castéllon and Valencia itself.

2018 Rostro Sonrosado Organic Tempranillo Rosé
Bodega Sierra Norte/Boutinot Spain
DO Utiel-Requena
Comunidad Valenciana
Spain

This part of Spain is very beautiful and bursting with good wines, although that has been something of a local secret for quite a few decades, but that secret is now out. The traditional grape of the region is called Bobal, which has been rescued from mediocrity over the last few years and is now making some wonderful wines – more of which next time. However this is made from the far more famous Tempranillo – pronounced Temp-ra-neeyo – the grape of Rioja and Ribera del Duero.

The land is much higher inland – 600-800 metres above sea level – than it is on the coast, so the air is cooler and the powerful breezes off the Mediterranean have an effect too. This allows for slower ripening so gives a slower build up of sugars and good retention of acid. In the right hands that means this area can produce balanced and elegant wines

Utiel-Requena vines at Bodegas Sierra Norte.

For a Spanish rosé this is pretty pale as the wine has just 8 hours skin contact – although I like a good colour on a rosado. The colour comes from the skins and the shorter the time on the skins, the paler the wine.

It’s an enticing medium pink with a little touch of orange, while the nose has red fruit notes of raspberry, redcurrant and a touch of cream too.

The palate delivers lovely flavours of redcurrant, strawberries, raspberries, rhubarb and blood orange with that softening, textural cream component too. The flavour is mouth filling and while the wine is textured it is also refreshing and lively. I hate to admit how quickly the bottle emptied. It goes with anything at all, or indeed is lovely on its own, and it makes a perfect partner to tapas. This is a very good rosé indeed as well as being enormously enjoyable  – 89/100 points.

Available in the UK at around £10 per bottle from All About Wine – more stockist information is available from Boutinot Wines, the UK distributor

Wine of the Week – a great red Rioja

As any cursory read of these pages shows, I love Spain. I love the country, the people, the history, the culture, the food and the wine. Spain is simply one of the most exciting wine producing countries there is.

The whole country is awash with wine. It is the third largest wine producing country in the world, after France and Italy, but has the largest vineyard plantings of any country on earth.

In the UK we do not give Spain the respect it deserves, Spanish wine is incredibly varied and diverse, but apparently most of us really only drink Rioja and a bit of cheap Cava.

That is a shame as there is so much more going on in this wonderful and colourful country – dip into these pages and you will find a great deal about Spanish wine, food and travel.

Recently I attended a most fabulous event. It was a tasting hosted by Bodegas Bilbainas and it was an evening to remember.

Bodegas Bilbainas in Haro, Rioja

 

Bilbainas are an old Rioja house, founded in 1904 and now owned by Catalan Cava producers Codorníu. It has always been a good house, but seems to have become even better of late. Unusually for a Rioja producer Bodegas Bilbainas have always owned a lot of vineyards, 250 hectares near Haro in Rioja Alta in fact. This is why they label their wines Viña Pomal – Pomal being the name of this estate, as they only make estate wines.

The event was held at the elegant Hispania restaurant in London’s Lombard Street and I have seldom been anywhere so civilised and comfortable. The service was perfect and the food set the wines off perfectly. I tasted a glorious array of wines, all of which were superb, and I will write about them soon, but with winter fast approaching I thought that I would tell you about a really fine red.

Wine map of Spain – click for a larger view

A map of Rioja – click for a larger view.

2010 Viña Pomal Gran Reserva
DOCa / PDO Rioja
Bodegas Bilbainas
Haro, La Rioja
Spain

Gran Reservas are traditionally thought to be the best wines of Rioja and are only made in the very best vintages and were pretty rare when I was young. Such vintages come along much more frequently today – so you see global warming is not all bad!

2010 was a really great vintage, rated Excellente, and the quality shows. Most Rioja blends Tempranillo with a little Garnacha / Grenache and possibly a dash of Mazuelo (aka Carignan) and the much more rare Graciano. This wine is just 90% Tempranillo and 10% Graciano and is aged for 12 months in American oak barrels – American oak gives that vanilla character – before being racked, blended and returned to barrel for another year. After that the wine is transferred to wooden vats to fall bright, bottled and aged in bottle for a further three years before going on sale. 

Viña Pomal is an old, but very strong brand.

 

I sat with this wine, as I had an array of 4 or 5 others to distract me, and I am so glad as it really developed in the glass. It is undeniably pretty with loads of deep red fruit, vanilla, cloves and a light dusting of vanilla, coconut, tobacco and leather, as well as a note of cream. The palate was supple, silky and refined. Just nudging full-bodied it elegantly filled my senses and my palate with rich fruit, but also those classic, mineral, savoury, spicy and balsamic sensations that make Rioja so moreish. The tannins give a light bite while the acidity gives a nice touch of freshness.

This is a brilliant wine. It delivers so much and promises so much too. It is absolutely delicious right now, but will happily age for another decade, and become more savoury and complex – although some of that fruit will fade. It is bright and wonderfully youthful with great structure and real elegance – 93/100 points.

A wine like this is very versatile and would be fabulous with Christmas dinner, but is equally great with any meat dish, or even cheese.

This wine is strangely difficult to buy, but can be ordered online from Vinum.co.uk  and the equally fine 2011 vintage from Decantalo.com, Uvinum.co.uk and Exel Wines.

 

Wine of the Week – a sumptuous and great value Rioja

Looking south across Rioja just north of Haro.

I love red Rioja. Spain has much more to offer the wine enthusiast than just Rioja, but Rioja can make very fine wines indeed – hence its fame.

The trouble with Rioja is the question of what you are going to get. They aren’t all good, some are downright ordinary in fact, so you must be wary. However, red Rioja can deliver a great deal of pleasure and many very high quality wines.

As far as good value is concerned though the picture is also mixed. I generally hold it to be true that cheaper Reservas and Gran Reservas, from bodegas that have no fame or are just made up brands for the supermarkets, are normally not worth drinking. For me the reliable, value category of red Rioja is the Crianza level, which spend the shortest time ageing in oak.

However, one of the great joys of wine is that every now and again a wine pops up that confounds our beliefs.

Vineyards near Haro in Rioja.

Recently I presented a very well received tasting of the wonderful wines of CVNE, one of the truly great Rioja houses recently. All the wines were really good, but for me the absolute star wines were the magnificent 2012 Imperial Reserva, ready to drink and wonderfully refined and elegant – stockists here and here – and the quirkily delicious 2014 Monopole Clasíco white.

CVNE, like many of the original band of Rioja bodegas, are based in Haro.

I showed a fabulous Crianza from CVNE’s Viña Real estate in Rioja Alavesa. It offered rich fruit and lots of character and showed just how good a Crianza wine can be. However, good though it was, another wine stood out for the mix of quality and amazing value for money. Indeed I liked it so much that it is my Wine of the Week.

2011 Cune Gran Reserva

DOCa Rioja

Bodegas CVNE

Haro

Rioja

Spain

Founded in 1879 and still owned and run by members of the founding family, C.V.N.E. – the Compañía Vinicola del Norte de España – is one of the great Rioja houses. I love showing their wines at tastings because they have such a wide range of styles, quality levels and labels as their stable includes the famous Monopole range, the great classic Imperial wines and the two single estate wines of Viña Real and Contino.

The wines labelled as Cute – CVNE in old copperplate script – are their base level wines, but still very good in my opinion. The Barrel Fermented white is a wonderful example of getting the oak just right, while the Crianza is a great value gem and the Cune Reserva is, to quote my friend Tom Canavan, a ‘proper wine’. 

However it is this beauty that currently represents the most amazing value for money and it is a really lovely wine.

The blend is 85% Tempranillo, 10% Graciano and 5% Mazuelo – no Grenache – from vineyards around Haro in Rioja Alta. It is aged for ged for 2 years in mainly American oak, but some French oak as well, and 3 years in bottle. The French oak allows for a little tingle of tannin that suits the wine.

Wines ageing in the Imperial barrel cellar at CVNE. This cellar was designed by Gustave Eiffel.

This is an unashamedly rich Rioja, the lack of Grenache allows the dark fruits to hold sway. It has spice, vanilla, dark plums, blackberries and blueberries on the nose with a light dusting of fresher red plum and raspberry too. The palate is soft, silky, refined and deeply upholstered – sumptuous in fact. There are some savoury, leather notes, a little bite of tannin and some nice freshness all giving definition. It has wonderful concentration – the vintage was very good – with loads of ripe fruit and good length and could have a long life ahead of it if you can resist. Whether you drink it or keep it, I would recommend that you grab some now – 92/100 points.

Drink it with lamb, beef or roast pork, but above all, drink it.

Available in the UK @ £12.50 per bottle – yes £12.50! from Tesco and Tesco Wine by the Case.

Monople Clásico, the return of a Spanish classic

Looking south across Rioja just north of Haro.

I have always had a soft spot for white Rioja, whether fresh and crisp, barrel fermented or aged in oak. Well now there is a new style of dry white Rioja around. I say new, but actually it is an old style that has been brought back to life.

When I was young and just getting into wine I spent a great deal of time in Spain and one of the most widely sold white wines was Monopole made by the wonderful CVNE, Compañía Vinicola del Norte de España. The Monopole had been created in 1914 and was given a French name, because the founding brothers – Eusebio and Raimundo Real de Asúa – loved the white wines of Burgundy, and a German style bottle because German white wines were so commercially important in those days. It was the first white Rioja made in anything like a fresh, lively, modern style. Of course in those days it was partly aged in oak, but it was a complete break with most white Riojas of the times.

Ever since the early 1980s CVNE have made fresher, completely unoaked style of Monopole, which is a very good, just off-crisp wine that is very versatile and pleasurable. However to mark 100 years of Monopole, they have recently returned to making the traditional Monopole as well and it is wonderful to revisit this wine and to experience again what a fascinating – and delicious – wine style it is.

They call this reborn wine Monople Clásico and like the ‘normal’ Monopole it is made from Rioja’s classic white grape Viura, but then it gets very different. Firstly the Viura juice is settled in concrete tanks, then fermented at low temperatures in stainless steel. Then they add a small amount of aged Manzanilla Sherry from the famous Bodegas Hidalgo – yes really. Manzanilla is basically a Fino Sherry from Sanlúcar de Barrameda in the Sherry region and so it is dry and ages with the Flor, or yeast, to give it complexity and that nutty, bready character. Then the blended wine is aged for 8 months in 300 and 500 litre barrels – used barrels so it softens the wine rather than flavours it.

Bodegas CVNE in Haro.

Now, I will have to whisper this and you will have to promise never to mention it to anybody else, but I do not really like Sherry. I appreciate it and am very interested in it, but cannot drink much of it for pleasure. What you have to realise is that Sherry holds the same place in many, possibly most, wine people’s hearts that Alfa Romeo does for petrol heads. You simply have no credibility unless you profess to love Sherry, so this will have to remain our little secret.

So, adding Sherry to a wine might seem strange, illegal even given that Rioja is a PDO / appellation and so the grapes must be grown in the correct area for the term Rioja to appear on the label. That is true, but because CVNE had traditionally made the wine this way, they were allowed to do so again. The idea is strange, but it really, really works. It makes for a truly delicious, fine and complex wine that I loved.

It seems that the management of CVNE were reminiscing about the old style Monopole, as the centenary of the brand was about to happen, so they sent down to the cellar for a bottle and could only find a single example left, a bottle from 1979. They tasted it and it was still in great condition, fresh, lively and so delicious that they decided to resurrect the style. To help them they called on the services of Ezequiel Garcia, the retired CVNE winemaker from the 1940s to the 1970s.

Ezequiel was thrilled to be part of the project and had no reservations in resurrecting this classic wine from the past, indeed I am told that he found it a moving experience. The part of that loves 1940s music hopes that Ezequiel cried!

Wine map of Spain – click for a larger view

CVNE, like many of the original band of Rioja bodegas, are based in Haro in Rioja Alta.

2014 Monopole Classico
CVNE
DOCa Rioja
Spain

The nose is very appealing, delicately aromatic and lifted with waxy apples, light custard notes, some spice, wafts of brioche, flakey pastry, rock pools and sea breeze. The palate is very fresh, lively and slightly saline as well sever so slightly succulent with cooked lemons and apple fruit as well as a waxy quality. There is something smoky and haunting about this wine and the flavours build in the mouth becoming slightly rounded and mealy even. This is a beguiling, complex and fascinating wine that is deeply satisfying, bone dry and wonderfully complete with richness and freshness vying with each other to dominate your senses – 93/100 points.

This would be wonderful with some sea bream, sea bass, mussels, clams, garlic prawns, oysters, chicken, pâté, smoked salmon, or anything light.

Available in the UK for around £25 a bottle from: The Wine Reserve.

It is also available mail order from Spain – until Brexit ruins everything – for around €15 a bottle plus shipping – from Decántalo and Uvinum.

 

Wine of the Week – a great, great value Rioja & a couple of real treats for Christmas

Looking south across Rioja just north of Haro.

Rioja is – I think – one of the great wine regions of the world. However, there is plenty of pretty underwhelming Rioja – and I am talking about red Rioja here, I have written about white Rioja here – produced. Increasingly there is reliable, but unexciting Rioja at lower prices, while the more exciting examples – and here I really mean the Reservas and Gran Reservas – cost a bit more than most of us can justify for an everyday sort of wine. I have written extensively about the history of Rioja and you can read the piece by clicking here.

Map of Rioja – click for a larger view. Non watermarked maps are available by agreement.

Vineyards near Haro in Rioja.

Well the other day I tasted an affordable Rioja Reserva that was quite delicious, full of character, full of flavour and full of fruit. I kept coming back to it to check, but it really was very good. So I have made it my Wine of the Week.

2011 Cune Reserva
DOCa Rioja
Bodegas CVNE
Haro
Rioja
Spain

CVNE, or Compañía Vinicola del Norte de España (The Wine Company of Northern Spain) was founded in 1879 by Eusebio and Raimundo Real de Asúa and is still controlled by their direct descendants. CVNE was written as Cune in the old days, so that became the brand and is pronounced ‘Coon-eh’. Over the decades other labels have been introduced, Monopole, Imperial, Viña Real and Contino, but the Cune wines themselves remain the core of the range and provide the more everyday wines and the midweek treats.

Bodegas CVNE in Haro.

As such an old established and still family run producer, CVNE are often regarded as being very traditional. However, I am rather of the opinion that this is not entirely the case. There are traditional aspects to them certainly, but having been familiar with their wines for many decades now, I think the wines are richer than they used to be, with more emphasis on fruit – which for me is a very good thing.

This Reserva comes from the stunning 2011 vintage which is officially classified as ‘Excelente’ or excellent. It is a classic Rioja blend of  85% Tempranillo, 5% Garnacha, 5% Mazuelo and 5% Graciano. The grapes were hand picked and then fermented in stainless steel and the wine was aged for aged for 18 months in American oak barrels and some French oak barrels too. The wine was aged for a further year in bottle before release.

The colour is deep and bright and the nose has lifted, fragrant fruit, cherry, plum, blackberry all mingle together with vanilla and spice and coffee together with a touch of something leathery and savoury. The palate is rich, concentrated and rounded with supple tannins, intense dark fruit, spice and a little touch of welcome, balancing freshness. It finishes pretty long and is very satisfying.

I have known this wine for a long time and often show it on my courses, but it was nice to reacquaint myself with it and to realise what a very good wine it actually is. It also delivers a huge amount of pleasure – 90/100 points.

Available in the UK for £11-£13 per bottle from Majestic, Waitrose, Waitrose Cellar, Ocado, Asda Wine Shop and Bargain Booze and many others – click here for more stockists.
Available in the US for around $20- $25, for US stockists click here.

Recently I have also tasted a couple of other wines from CVNE, the Imperial Reserva and Gran Reserva. Launched in the 1920s as a premium Rioja the wine was originally aimed at the UK market and bottled in Imperial Pints, hence the name. They were both magnificent wines and would be wonderful to enjoy over Christmas:

Wines ageing in the Imperial barrel cellar at CVNE. This cellar was designed by Gustave Eiffel.

2010 Imperial Reserva
DOCa Rioja
Bodegas CVNE
Haro
Rioja
Spain

Another stellar vintage, this 85% Tempranillo, 10% Graciano and 5% Mazuelo blend was aged for 2 years in American and French oak casks and another 2 years in bottle.

The nose is rich and powerful with ripe black and red fruit, vanilla, spice, herbs, coffee and leather. The palate is pretty full and silky with that rich fruit and the herbal, spice, earthy tastes giving an almost sweet and sour character. A complex and delicious wine that drinks very well already, but that touch of chalkiness to the tannins will soften and it would get more complex with age – 92/100 points.

Available in the UK for around £20-£24 per bottle from Majestic, The Wine Reserve, The Co-operative, Waitrose, Waitrose Cellar, The Wine Society and many others – click here for more stockists.
Available in the US for around $32- $38 – for US stockists click here.

2008 Imperial Gran Reserva
DOCa Rioja
Bodegas CVNE
Haro
Rioja
Spain

2008 was not rated quite as highly as 2010 and 2011, but CVNE still got some fabulous results. This 85% Tempranillo, 10% Graciano and 5% Mazuelo blend was aged in American and French oak casks for 2 years and in bottle for another three years before release.

This is a big wine still, but beginning to show a little maturity. The colour is more ruby and the fruit is more strawberry with a touch of richer blackberry. There is also vanilla,  spicy, toasty oak and a real savoury note. This follows onto the palate with umami, balsamic characters as well as the rich fruit, leathery and earthy flavours, dried fruit, spice and supple, silky tannins. All in all this is a real treat and a fine Rioja – 93/100 points.

Available in the UK for around £20-£24 per bottle from Tanners, The Wine Society (2010 vintage), The Wine Reserve and many others – click here for more stockists.
Available in the US for around $70 – for US stockists click here.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I do sometimes do some work for CVNE, but the views expressed here are my own and I was not asked or paid to write the piece.

Wine of the Week – a touch of Spanish tradition

Recently I led a tasting of wines made by Bodegas López de Heredia in Rioja – it was at the West London Wine School, check out more of their tastings here. All the wines were excellent, but even in such exalted company, some stood out from the pack. The undisputed highlights were the astonishing 1994 Viña Tondonia Gran Reservas, both red and white, which were wines of incredible finesse and beauty. As you might expect, wines of that quality and age are not cheap, but there were some stunning wines at lower prices that offered superb value for money too. I loved one of them so much that I have made it my Wine of the Week.

2005 Viña Gravonia Blanco Crianza 
Bodegas López de Heredia Viña Tondonia
DOCa / PDO Rioja
Haro
Spain

Bodegas López de Heredia was only the third bodega to be founded in Rioja after the wine revolution began there in the 1840s-1860s. They were founded in 1877, so really were at the forefront of making Rioja the great region that we know today. Rioja’s development was a slow process in truth, you can read a history of Rioja that I wrote by clicking here, it is a story worth reading as it might not quite be what you expect.

López de Heredia was founded by Don Rafael López de Heredia y Laneta and it is still owned and run by his family to this day. A visit there is always worthwhile as it widely regarded as the most traditional Rioja producer there is. Rioja actually took quite a while to develop its style and to formulate its ‘traditions’, even López de Heredia. Oak ageing was used from the beginning, it was what set Rioja apart from the rest of Spain, but the use of the terms Reserva and Gran Reserva was not established until the 1920s at the earliest and the ageing regulations were not established until the 1940s. So whether the wines are traditional or merely idiosyncratic, I couldn’t really say. I just know they are very good.

The wines are very unusual, especially the whites. They undergo long ageing in wood and develop very complex characters as a result. This ageing leads to a note of oxidation in the white wines that is not totally unlike a Fino or Manzanilla sherry. This resemblance can be over stated though, I do not really enjoy Sherry, but I love these wines, so don’t let that idea put you off.

López de Heredia’s vineyards, Viña Tondonia is contained within the loop of the Ebro River in the foreground, Viña Gravonia is just behind – photo courtesy of the winery.

They make their most famous wines from their  Tondonia vineyard, which is why Viña Tondonia forms part of the company’s name. Tondonia can be either red or white and are labelled as Reserva or Gran Reserva. They also produce red Reservas and Gran Reservas from the nearby Viña Bosconia vineyard, while their red Crianza is called Viña Cubillo and comes from the Viña Cubillas vineyard. Their white Crianzas come from the Viña Laconia vineyard and are labelled as Viña Gravonia.

Map of López de Heredia’s vineyards – courtesy of the winery.

All of these wines are aged for a lot longer in wood than the regulations require. Gran Reserva reds spend 9 years in barrel and the whites 10 years. Reservas spend 6 years in barrel, while red Crianzas are aged for 3 years in barrel and the whites for 4.

López de Heredia stick to using American oak, as is traditional in Rioja – you can read why here. However, it is American oak with a difference. They buy whole trees and ship them to Spain where they are split, seasoned outside and turned into barrels. This contrasts with American oak barrels made in America which are sawn – which cuts the grain allowing more flavour to come out – and seasoned in a kiln, which concentrates the lactones to give that creamy, sweet vanilla character so typical of American oak and Rioja. So although López de Heredia age their wines in American oak for a long time, it is a more subtle process than you might expect. Also the wines are aged for a short time in new oak before being racked into old, neutral barrels for the extended ageing.

Barrel ageing at López de Heredia – photo courtesy of the winery.

The Viña Gravonia Crianza Blanco is 100% Viura, the Tondonia whites also have 10% Malvasia to make them a little richer. It was fermented in big wooden vats with a spontaneous fermentation of the wild yeast and then aged for 4 years in barrel.

The nose is extraordinary, with that touch of Fino sherry, toasted almonds, olives, a note of the sea, honeysuckle, beeswax, gentle spice, orange pekoe tea, firm white peach, quince and orange peel. The palate is dominated by the acidity and mineral character together with cinder toffee, honeycomb, dried apricots, caramelised orange, waxy lemon and almonds. There is even a very subtle feel of tannin on the long, long finish. It is an extraordinary wine and has a little more weight, concentration and fat then the more widely available 2006 vintage – 2005 was the better year.

Try it with classic fish dishes like sole meunière, or grilled Dover sole, but I expect it would be great with just about any fish dish, anything in a creamy sauce and roast chicken too – 93/100 points.

Available in the UK for around £19 per bottle – for stockists click here.
For US stockists click here.

It won’t be for everyone, but this wine is a delicious example of a really rare style of wine. It certainly excited me at the tasting and thrilled everyone else there too. What’s more it gives an idea of what these great old style Rioja whites are like without having to pay a fortune. Do try it or a Viña Tondonia white if you can.

 

Wine of the Week – a delicious Vermouth from Rioja

The Vermouth display at La Casa del Abuelo in Madrid.

Until recently I could not remember the last time I had drunk any Vermouth. In my early years I used to sell it and it was so fashionable that it was positioned right at the back of the shop, next to the equally popular Sherries and Tonic Wines – ah the early 1980s really were another country.

Recently though I have started becoming aware of Vermouth being much more visible than I can remember for a very long time – I suppose it might be because of the big trend for Gin and Martinis, whatever the reason it is fascinating to see this old favourite having a resurgence, however modest.

A Vermouth is a fascinating wine style – even if you don’t like them. It is both a fortified wine and an aromatised wine.

There are four components in the making of Vermouth:

Base wine

Sugar syrup or a mistelle (fortified grape juice)

Spirit

Herbs, roots, plants and spices to give the flavouring – the most historically important flavouring is the wormwood shrub, wermut in German – pronounced vermut – from which the drink gets its name.

It is worth noting that like gruit and hops in beer, the herbs and spices were originally meant to act as a preservative and to have medicinal purposes too, not just to be a flavouring, in the distant past they probably covered up the smell and taste of some pretty rank wine too!

How you make Vermouth:

The base wine is sweetened with the sugar syrup or the mistelle. The herbs are macerated in the spirit and this flavoured alcohol is blended into the sweetened wine – it can then be aged for complexity or left as it is for freshness.

Apparently the first Vermouth to be bottled and sold was created by Antonio Benedetto Carpano in Turin, Piemonte, in 1786. His invention was the first commercial red Vermouth and a form of it is still available as Carpano Classico Vermouth, while a newer recipe, called Antica Formula Carpano caught my eye recently and that has gone for a bigger flavour and the artisan look, so much so that you could be forgiven for assuming that it is the older product.

All other commercial styles – as opposed those made by farmers for their own consumption – seem to have been based on what Carpano created and white, rosé and drier styles followed over time. White Vermouth was apparently created by Dolin in Chambéry in Savoie in 1821. Interestingly Chambéry is just over the Alps from Piemonte and in 1932 Chambéry was created an appellation contrôlée, or PDO, the only one for Vermouth. In my youth I remember enjoying Dolin’s Chamberyzette – available here and here, this is their white Vermouth blended with wild Alpine strawberry juice – I used to love, perhaps I still would if I tried it?

The wonderful menu mirror at La Casa del Abuelo.

I bet you are wondering where this is leading, well recently I was in Madrid and was having a happy time in one of the great bars of that city of great bars, La Casa del Abuelo – the original one at 12 Calle Victoria. This Madrid institution has been around since 1906 – it seems that Ernest Hemingway was a frequent visitor during the 1920s and ’30s, but then every bar in Madrid claims that, and he drank so much they may well all be right – and it only serves prawns. The other branches have bigger menus, but the original one only serves gambas done six different ways. The classics are Gambas al Ajillo, Gambas a la Plancha, Langostinos con Gabardina (big prawns in batter – hence gaberdines or overcoats! They rather wonderfully translate it as muffled shrimps) and their Croquetas de Gamba Roja (red prawn croquettes – they’re really good).

They have a small wine list nowadays, but the first time I went there – some 30 years ago – they only served 2 drinks, both of which are still available, a sweet red wine or a red Vermouth.

Well on my recent rip I ordered the Vermouth because a friend had mentioned this particular drink to me – he actually ships it into the UK, and I was intrigued. I tried it and really enjoyed it, so have made it my Wine of the Week.

Vermut Lacuesta Rojo
Bodegas Martinez Lacuesta
Haro
Rioja
Spain

I have long been an admirer of Bodegas Martinez Lacuesta. Founded in Haro in 1895 they have quietly got on with making superb wines ever since. They produce four different wine ranges, the classic Martinez Lacuesta wines and the somewhat funkier Comprador range which have more Garnacha in them than Tempranillo – Garnacha is usually very much in the supporting role in Rioja. Nowadays they also make make some excellent speciality Riojas and a couple of white Ruedas.

‘Vermut’ is a real speciality of the bodega – they have been bottling it since 1937, but I bet it has been made since the beginning. Nowadays they actually produce five different Vermuts, Blanco (white), Reserva Roble Francés (Reserva aged in French oak), Reserva Acacia (Reserva aged in acacia wood barrels) and a Limited Edition – Vermut Edición Limitada – which is aged in barrel for 14 months.

However, it is the Rojo, or red Vermut, that is the mainstay of their Vermouth production. It is all hand made in small batches from grapes grown in Martinez Lacuesta’s own vineyards. The twist here is that the botanicals, herbs etc, are added to white wine and then aged in American oak barrels for three years – this also introduces sweet vanilla flavours that show up in the finished Vermouth. This mixture is then added to the base red wine along with sugar, caramel and alcohol and aged in French oak barrels for another three months.

The nose is very complex with spices, herbs, dried fruit, toffee, vanilla and camomile. The palate is mellow with sweet dried fruit and an attractively herbal and medicinal character. There is plenty of richness and sweetness, but that is balanced by the herbs and touch of bitterness.

I actually found it really appetising, invigorating and unexpectedly satisfying. I don’t think it went with the gambas, but it was a good drink. I drank it neat with ice, but I am willing to bet it would be delicious with a slice of orange and a splash of sparkling water or lemonade, or even some orange juice – 88/100 points.

In the meantime, Vermut Lacuesta Rojo is available in the UK from Basco – formerly Greys Fine Foods – for £13.50 a bottle.
For US stockists click here.

Stop press:

Since returning from Madrid I have discovered that Vermut Lacuesta Rojo makes a superb Marianito cocktail – simpler recipes are available:

Ingredients: 8 parts of Vermut Lacuesta Rojo well chilled
1-2 parts of gin
1-2 parts of Curaçao orange
1 touch of Campari
1 touch of angostura
orange or lemon juice at will
ice
1 green olive

Preparation: Put all the liquid ingredients in a mixing bowl with ice. Mix without shaking and serve with more ice and remember to add the olive, although I prefer a slice of orange.

Wandering around Madrid I quickly realised that Vermouth is now big in Spain and is produced right across the country. There are plenty of examples from Catalunya, even from Priorat, some from Jerez, including those made by Bodegas Lustau, Cruz Conde Vermouth made from Pedro Ximenez in Montilla-Morilles, Ribera del Duero and there is even a Galician Vermouth made from Albariño grapes and I intend to taste as many as possible in my forthcoming visits to Spain.

It is amazing to think that this drink that I had almost forgotten about is enjoying such an exciting renaissance and giving so much pleasure. If you are open to interesting and complex drinks, do give one a try soon.

Marqués de la Concordia – Spain in a glass and on the plate

A small Syrah vineyard at the Hacienda Zorita Organic farm. They mainly use this wine as a rub for one of their cheeses.

Long ago before my country decided to become foolish and voted by a tiny majority to leave the EU, I was invited to Spain as a guest of the Concordia Family Estates, which is a group of companies that is really on the rise. It’s run by some very passionate people and it shows. It all started with the Hacienda Marqués de la Concordia in Rioja Baja and over the years they have added other wineries, labels and brands to their stable. Bodegas Lagunilla was first in 1994 and since then Marqués de Monistrol have joined the group, allowing them to make some fine Cavas. Federico Paternina added another famous Rioja bodega, while with Bodega Rioja Santiago they acquired the second oldest producer in the region – it was founded in 1870. In Rioja they also own Viña Alarde, which produces more modern styles of value for money wines.

Further afield they also own an amazing estate in Andalusia called Ándalus which even grows Petit Verdot.

I’ll be honest, this company – or these companies – have so many strings to their bow that it is very hard to get a grip on it, but it doesn’t really matter, because everything was wonderful and each component made sense.

The beautiful Hacienda Zorita photo – courtesy of the hotel.

Storks are a common sight in these parts, this one is on the roof of the Hacienda.

I was invited visit the Hacienda Zorita, which is a charming boutique hotel that belongs to the company, they call it the Hacienda Zorita Wine Hotel & Spa. It is a few kilometres outside the beautiful cathedral city of Salamanca and it really is idyllic. It dates back to 1366 and was both the hospitality buildings for the local Dominican Monks and their farm, complete with water mill to make their bread – amazingly they say that Christopher Columbus – Cristobal Colon – came here when he was trying to raise funds for his first voyage.

My very comfortable room at the Hacienda.

This is a wonderful part of the world and the Tormes River flows right by the Hacienda before winding the 40 or so kilometres to the border with Portugal where it flows into the Duero / Douro at Fermoselle in Arribes del Duero.

The organic farm.

They have buffalo on the farm…

… and Iberian pigs.

The wonderful finished products.

Not content with being in hotels and wine, the company is also into fine food production. Many of their wine estates also grow olives and make superlative oil, but they also have an organic farm where they produce some stunning cheeses and the finest jamon and chorizo that I have ever tasted. They have recently started producing balsamic vinegar too, I got to try it and it is shockingly good, the older barrels were almost solid like toffee, but it isn’t yet ready to put on the market.

The balsamic vinegar ageing in different size casks, the older it is the smaller the cask as it evaporates.

Not far from Femoselle and the frontier with Portugal they also have the Hacienda Zorita Natural Reserve, which is a wine estate in the wilds of the Arribes del Duero wine region and the Arribes del Duero Natural Park which also covers the Douro Valley over the border in Portugal. Traditionally this area grows Juan Garcia, a grape that is not particularly loved, but that can make very good things when treated right. However at Zorita they decided to base their wines on Tempranillo, which is permitted in the DO. In addition, acting under advice from Richard Smart, they also decided to plant Syrah, and while this is not permitted in the local DO, it seems to perform very well indeed.

Hacienda Zorita Natural Reserve Unamuno Vineyard – there’s a billiard table at the top of that tower!

The estate from the top of the tower.

The estate is named in honour of Miguel Unamuno, who was a great writer and philosopher of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was Rector of Salamanca University and travelled widely in the Duero Valley writing about his journeys.

The presumably much repaired Roman Bridge over the Tormes River at Ledesma, just think how many people will have crossed that over the centuries. My ancestor William Sadler served under Wellington in the Peninsular War and some of Wellington’s army marched this way in 1812, so I might not have been the first member of my family to walk on that bridge.

Wine regions of northern Spain, Salamanca and the Hacienda Zorita are where ‘del’ is in Tierra del Vino de Zamora – click for a larger view

Over the course of the visit I managed to taste a few of their wines and these were the standouts for me:

Marqués de la Concordia MM Reserva de la Familia Rosado Brut
DO Cava, so made by the traditional / Champagne method
Sant Sadurní d’Anoia, Catalunya

70% Pinot Noir with 30% Monastrell aged 48 months on the lees.
It was made at Mas Monistrol, the home of Marqués de Monistrol.

This has a pretty, pale wild salmon colour and a fine persistent mousse. The nose offers rose petals and red fruit – a melange of strawberry and cherry – together with a touch of toffee and brioche, while the palate is, clean, zesty, taut and finely textured with succulent red fruit and a touch of shortbread. All in all a very stylish Cava with lots of finesse – 88/100 points

Available in the UK from Amazon for £37.50 for a case of 3 bottles.

2015 Vega de la Reina
DO Rueda
Castilla y Léon

I am a big fan of Rueda wines and think it is the most reliable white region in Spain. At the very least the wines never disappoint and the Verdejo grape is a terrific grape that is not unlike Sauvignon Blanc, but usually a tad richer and more herbal.

This wine is basically a Verdejo with 5% Sauvignon blended in. The grapes were picked at night to retain the freshness. Cold fermented using aromatic yeast and then aged for 3 months on the lees.

The nose has rich aromas, with a touch of olive oil, olives, ripe peach and a touch of apricot skin, citrus, some a little light pineapple too.

The palate has quite a rich mouthfeel, textured, and again with an olive twist, peach skin and even a little spritz. It has a rich, fat style, with nectarine succulence and a slight feel of tannin, perhaps from skin contact. The palate is lightly creamy and is balanced by the zesty quality of lemon rind and grapefruit pith – 88/100 points.

Available in the UK from Ocado for £10 per bottle and from Amazon where a case of 3 bottles is £22.57.

2011 Hacienda Zorita Natural Reserve Syrah

Unamuno Vineyard

Vino de la Tierra Castilla y León

100% Syrah aged for 18 months in a mixture of French and American oak barrels.

Unusually this offers bright, red fruit notes, as well as being lightly  floral, a little earthy, with some tobacco and a little sweet vanilla too.

Very supple palate, with lots of rich red fruit and good refreshing acidity making it feel svelte and poised. There are some attractive fine grain tannins and the oak makes it gently smoky. Avery attractive wine, the sweet vanilla works well and lovely juicy fruit is nicely kept in check. Nice tingling spicy finish blanks the bright fruit, it was very attractive to drink, but will become even more complex in 3 or 4 years time.

Available in the UK for about £15 a bottle from Ocado and Amazon.

2009 Marqués de Concordia Reserva 
DOCa Rioja
Rioja

100% Tempranillo aged for 24 months in French and American oak barrels.

This has a great nose, lifted, peppery and savoury, with some dark fruit, especially dark cherry. Earthy notes balance all that seductive power making it really attractive.

Opens up in the mouth with a supple texture, still peppery, spicy, polished velvety tannins and lots of smoky, tobacco, vanilla oak.

Very attractive stuff, but wow, this is a big modern, almost New World style Rioja – 90/100 points.

Available in the UK from Majestic for around £11.50 per bottle

2012 Marqués de Concordia HZ12 Zorita Abascal Crianza

DO Ribera del Duero

Castilla y Léon

The grapes are grown in the Abascal Vineyard, which is next to Vega Sicilia, one of the most famous wines in the world.

This is pure Tempranillo – known as Tinto Fino in Ribera del Duero and it spends 18 months in American and French oak.

The colour is black, dense and opaque.

The nose is similarly ‘yuge’ with rich sweet notes of dark fruit, balsamic and fresh earth, black olive and bitter chocolate.

The palate has loads of fat and richness, with cocoa, mocha and ripe black plum flavours. Rich and concentrated, fleshy and succulent, but there is some balancing freshness there too, the tannins are ripe and the it is dominated by a mixture of velvety fruit and sweet umami characters. A monster of a wine, but I really liked it – 90/100 points.

The garden of the Hacienda just outside my villa.

All in all I had an amazing time in a wonderful place and came back relaxed and restored. It wasn’t their fault that my country went completely mad on the night I got back – June 23rd 2016, a day that will live in infamy.

It is an astonishingly beautiful part of the world, the hotel was a total joy, sitting in the garden there was one of those moments that I felt totally at peace, just staring into the velvety Spanish night sky. The wines were splendid, the food excellent, our hosts charming and for a brief moment all was right with the world.

 

Do visit if you can and if that isn’t possible, try some of their wines, cheeses or jamon – it’s all available by clicking here.

Olive tree at the organic farm.

Wine of the Week and my Wine of 2015 – a superb red Rioja from Contino

My first Wine of the Week for 2016 and very possibly my Wine of the Year in 2015 – although there is some stiff competition and I could easily choose something else – was rather fittingly the wine I was drinking as the new year began and 2015 was consigned to history.

I had struggled to think of what to drink with my slow cooked garlicky lamb – not because I did not know what to serve with it, but because I had far too many options as lots of different wines go brilliantly. Grenache, Claret, Cabernet, Merlot, Rioja, Ribera del Duero and Jumilla would lead the pack for reds for me, but whites can work very well too, especially Marsanne and Rousanne blends. In the end I chose something really, really special and I am very glad that I did.

It was a Rioja from Contino which is a single estate winery in Rioja Alavesa just a little north and west of Logroño. Many of you may be surprised that I emphasise that it comes from a single vineyard or estate, but that is quite rare in Rioja. Most Rioja is a branded product made from fruit sourced from a number of vineyards – much like Champagne usually is – and single estate wines are very far from being the norm.

Contino was the first single estate Rioja wine, certainly in modern times, and it was created in 1973 by the Real de Asúa family. This enterprising bunch – or their ancestors anyway – had previously set up the great Rioja house of CVNE in 1879 and their descendants continue to run CVNE (often written as Cune) – Compañía Vinicola del Norte de España or The Northern Spanish Wine Company – who produce Monopole, Imperial and Viña Real wines as well as Contino.

Rioja map- click for a larger view

In fact the family had bought grapes from the vineyard that became Contino for many decades and used them in their Viña Real wines, the modern Viña Real estate and winery is very near Contino. According to Jesús Madrazo, the charming, affable, inquiring and wonderfully talented winemaker at Contino, they always knew these grapes were special and so when the owners came to CVNE and explained that they wanted to retire but had no heirs to take the vineyard on, they jumped at the chance to acquire this amazing 62 hectare estate. It is situated just north west of Logroño and the Ebro river wraps around the estate making it appear to be a south facing peninsula. The vineyard is in effect a shallow south facing slope and so acts as a sun-trap and produces wonderfully ripe and concentrated wines.

The 8.5 hectare El Olivo block on the Contino estate.

José Madrazo Real de Asua was the family member who took on control of this estate and turned it into something very special in the region. José Madrazo retired in 2001 and sadly died in January 2015, but his son Jesús Madrazo took over the role has done a remarkable job of taking Contino to new heights. Over time they have changed the focus. Originally, as with most Rioja in those days, they blended all the grapes together, even the whites. For a few vintages now they have used those vines to craft one of the very finest white Riojas there is from a blend of Viura with Garnacha Blanca (Grenache Blanc) and Malvasia – actually that would have been great with my lamb too come to think of it.

José Madrazo, the brilliant and charming winemaker at Contino.

The main Contino wine is the red Contino Reserva, also available here, which never fails to impress me, but they now also produce some even more special wines. The pure Contino Garnacha (Grenache) is made from 70 years old vines and is one of the finest examples I have tried from Spain (together with these guys here). Their pure Contino Graciano is scintillating and a rare great example of this grape that should be better known. One of my favourite Riojas of all is always the wonderful Contino Viña Del Olivo wine made from a parcel of vines that surrounds an ancient olive tree – it is available here and here.

However, in the truly great years Jesús also makes a little Gran Reserva. This is traditionally only bottled in magnums (1.5 litres or 2 ordinary bottles) and I do like a magnum as it looks so dramatic on the dinner table. Anyway I dug out a magnum of the 2005 Gran Reserva to go with my lamb and it was so very good that I have made it my first Wine of the Week of 2016 and also my Wine of the Year for 2015.

Just in case you are not familiar with the regulations of what each type of Rioja actually is, here are the rules – all times are the minimum required and so the wines can be aged longer:

Joven / Cosecha	No oak ageing, or sometimes just a little. Oven never appears on the label, but often does on wine lists. Sometimes wines with a short amount of oak ageing are called Roble or Semi-Crianza, these are unofficial.
Crianza	1 year oak or tank ageing plus 1 year ageing in bottle – Crianzas can often offer very good value for money.
Reserva	1 year oak ageing plus 2 years ageing in bottle – these wines should only be produced in good vintages.
Gran Reserva	2 years oak ageing plus 3 year ageing in bottle – these wines should only be produced in the very best vintages.

2005 Contino Gran Reserva
DOCa Rioja
Viñedos del Contino
Rioja Alavesa, Rioja, Spain

This is a classic Rioja blend of 70% Tempranillo – 60 year old vines, 15% Graciano and 15% Garnacha aged for 36 months in American and French oak barrels. The American oak gives that classic touch of vanilla that is the hallmark of Rioja. 2005 was officially classified as an excellent – or rather excelente – vintage and produced some outstanding wines. Contino only made 2699 magnums of the 2005 Gran Reserva – mine was number 1236.

The colour is deep and sumptuous, while the nose is rich, enticing, spicy and smoky with touches of vanilla, cedar and mocha as well as rich, dark plums and blackberry. The palate is rich with wonderful concentration of fruit which together with the oak ageing gives a smooth, supple and silky wine that is always powerful and textured in the mouth – which is relatively unusual for Rioja. The wine leans towards being full-bodied with even some creaminess, but some lively freshness gives lovely balance and elegance by restraining the power, which makes it really drinkable and enjoyable. The tannins are perfectly tamed by the ageing, with just a little fine-grain tannin definition on the finish to help the structure of the wine. This is powerful, but it is not a showy blockbuster, it is a truly elegant and serious wine, one of the great Riojas – 95/100 points.

This truly is a great wine and I enjoyed it very much, but I think it would reward keeping for a good few years yet. There is no doubt that it needs food and is perfect with lamb, but it would also be fabulous with venison, duck or a good steak.

Available in the UK for around £100.00 – £135.00 per magnum from The Halifax Wine Company and Harrods.
Available in the US for around $140.00 – $170.00  per magnum from Woodland Hills Wine Company and Wired for Wine.

Wine of the Week 47 – a great experience and a great Rioja

This week I throw caution to the wind and celebrate tasting – and drinking – a rare gem from my cellar. It is most certainly not cheap, it isn’t widely available, but it was very, very good, so it is my Wine of the Week.

I was teaching a WSET level 2 course and none of my students had ever tasted a really mature wine, so we cooked up a plan to share an old bottle from my collection.

I spent a happy hour browsing through my bottles, wiping off the dust, and eventually I chose something really exciting. It had sat in my wine rack for well over twenty years just waiting for its moment and I crossed my fingers that it would live up to the hopes that we had for it.

Actually I just hoped it was still alive and not corked.

The bottle was a Rioja, but not just any old wine from that region. No this was the single vineyard 1970 Viña Tondonia Gran Reserva from the great Bodegas López de Heredia in Haro.

Looking south across Rioja’s vineyards from the Sierra de Cantabria mountains.

López de Heredia are unapologetically old fashioned even now, with long ageing and even producing oaky whites and rosés, but this wine was 45 years old. Franco was still dictator of Spain when it was made and Ted Heath was the UK Prime Minister. It was a very different world back then, without computers or the internet, cheap air travel or mobile phones – what’s more The Beatles hadn’t even officially split up and the first Moon landing was only the year before!

I have visited the bodega once, a long time ago, but it always stays with you as the place is one of the iconic wineries of Spain and their story is pretty good too. Still family run, they were founded in 1877 by Don Rafael López de Heredia Landeta who was actually born in Santiago, Chile. However he was Spanish and when the family returned to Spain in 1869 he went to nearby Bayonne in France to study business. While he was there he must have seen the problems the French were having with their vines – this was in the depths of the phylloxera crisis – and the business potential of applying Spanish wine to French producers who had no wine of their own to sell – click here to read about this period of Rioja’s history.

Map of Rioja – – click for a larger view – non watermarked PDF versions are available by agreement.

Don Rafael established his winery in Haro, in the barrio, near the railway station – this area is home to a great concentration of the fine old established Rioja producers, including CVNE and Muga, as the railway made exporting the wines much easier than it was in the past. At first the winery was pretty small, but as demand grew he sought to expand – in every direction.

First they set about digging cellars into the local hillside and then he wanted to enlarge the bodega buildings too. He did this by employing Galician stonemasons to turn the excavated stone into building material and then got an architect to design him an up to date winery that was much larger than he needed to allow for future growth. Amazingly it is still larger than they need, although they have expanded several times in to vacant buildings that Don Rafael put up back in the nineteenth century.

The beautiful López de Heredia winery, complete with the Txori Toki tower. Photo courtesy of the bodega.

As if developing downwards, by digging cellars, and outwards with more buildings was not enough, the winery was finished off with a lovely art nouveau tower that dominates that part of Haro and makes it impossible to miss the winery. This tower is known as the Txori Toki – bird tower in Basque – and its picture graces their wine labels to this day.

López de Heredia is a lovely bodega to visit, the buildings are beautiful and seem to capture the spirit of a time and a place in Rioja’s early history. The cellars are simply amazing with cavern after cavern opening up as you walk through them and you briefly like an explorer from a different age. At the heart of the cellars is a huge tasting room with an enormous round table and enjoying a tasting there is an experience that you never forget.

Unusually for Rioja their production has always been based upon their own vineyards and the core of their range is a series of single vineyard wines such as Viña Gravonia, Viña Cubillo, Viña Bosconia and most importantly the famous Viña Tondonia. This large, 100 hectare vineyard is so synonymous with the company, that its official name is Bodegas R. López de Heredia Viña Tondonia. This extraordinary site produces some of the most iconic and traditional Rioja ones in the form of their great reds, whites and one of the very last of the old style long barrel aged Rosados.

The tasting room deep in the cellars, photo courtesy of the winery.

1970 Viña Tondonia Gran Reserva
Bodegas R. López de Heredia Viña Tondonia
Haro, Rioja
The blend is something like 75% Tempranillo with 15% Garnacha and some Mazuelo and Graciano.  It fermented in wooden fermentation vats, before being aged for 10 years in 225 litre American oak barrels before being bottled.

Opening wine as old as this is always a gamble and a bit of a worry, but I had stored it well in my small cellar the Big Yellow Wine Storage in Fulham, so I should not have worried and as soon as I sniffed it, I knew it was good.
The colour was a real tawny orange and it had become transparent with age. The aroma was deep and savoury with leathery, earthy, meaty, mushroom notes together with some dried fruit – cherry, raspberry, prune, raisin – as well as orange, walnuts and rich coffee, it was really exciting sniffing this.
The palate too was extraordinary, with plenty of life in it still. There was a nice refreshing, elegant cut of acidity and even a little smear of tannins on the finish, but everything was superbly integrated and had become a whole entity with a silky mouthfeel. The flavours were overwhelmingly savoury with smoky, meaty tones, dried fruit giving that glimmer of sweetness and an intensity that totally dominated my senses. Whats more I have never had a dry wine that had such a long finish, it went on for around 2 minutes!
This was a great wine by any measure and what’s more showed no sign of being tired yet. Probably the finest old Rioja I have ever tasted – 95/100 points.

I don’t drink, or even taste, anything like this very often, but when I do it reinforces my joy of wine and excites me enormously. The sense of history I get when I taste old wine is a real part of the pleasure, so if you ever get the chance to taste a really old Rioja, do give it a go.