Great wines and unique vintages
Castillo Ygay Gran Reserva Especial has a delightful bouquet with scents of leather, mocha, freshly ground coffee beans and red berry fruit. It has a perfume that encapsulates everything there is to love about classic Rioja. The palate is a little viscous on the entry with hints of dried fig and dates. It is interwoven by a crisp thread of acidity and displays fine, slightly powdery tannins. There is abundant freshness and vitality: a Rioja speaking of its place with eloquence and clarity. This paragon of classic Rioja lives up to its evocative label.
One of the most famous names in Rioja, Marques de Murrieta was founded in 1852 by Luciano Murrieta, who was inspired by his threeyear sojourn in Bordeaux. In 1983 it was purchased by Vicente Dalmau Cebrian-Sagarriga and presently, winemaker Maria Vargas oversees their portfolio that includes both modern and classic styles of Rioja. The 300 hectares of vines on the Ygay Estate in La Rioja Alta allows them to control the quality and within this estate they have singled out specific parcels for their flagship wines.
The purple-coloured Clos de l’Obac exhibits a beautiful perfume of spice box, mineral, kirsch, red and black currants, and black cherry. Intensely fruity on the palate, it is already complex, sweet, and layered. The oak, tannin, and acidity are nicely integrated, and the finish is long and pure. The wine was aged for 14 months in new French oak and bottled unfiltered. More structured and expressive than its sibling, the nose delivers smoke, slate, scorched earth, black cherry, and blueberry. Plush and layered, the wine has excellent length and 6-8 years of cellaring potential.
The otherworldly Finca el Picón is sourced from a 2-hectare parcel of Tempranillo vines. It spent 26 months in new French oak and was bottled unfined and unfiltered. It presents an ethereal aromatic array of toasty new oak, smoke, pencil lead, violets, cinnamon, and blackberry jam. This is followed by a full-bodied, rich, lavish wine with very intense flavors, a velvety texture, and enough stuffing to evolve for up to a decade in the cellar. It will provide pleasure through the next 20 years.
In many ways, the portfolio of wines from Pago de los Capellanes epitomize many producers, whereby the most pleasure is found in the mid-range Crianza and Reserva level wines instead of the more expensive single parcel wines, which are prone to excessive oak to allow the terroir to speak and assert their individuality from Ribera del Duero’s other single parcel bottlings that form a chorus line of wines announcing their uniqueness.
The winery produces a luxury bottling called Emeritus. This wine is dark ruby in color, with plenty of toasty oak in evidence. Elegantly styled, with generous quantities of currant and cherry fruit, and a medium long, pure finish. Dominio de Valdepusa, located near Toledo, was the first winery to be awarded its own D. O. Under the Marques de Grinon label, the winery produces Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot, and Syrah. The 2002s were pleasant but the 2003s are clearly superior. All the wines see 12 months in French oak.
The prodigious Grandes Añadas marries elegance with tremendous power and flavor intensity. Aromas of spice box, violets, raspberries, blackberries, plums, cherries, and an undeniable minerality are found in this structured, ripe, phenomenally intense red.
The finish exceeds one minute, yet it gives the impression that it is not close to being mature. While it offers plenty of enjoyment now, ideally it should be consumed over the following two decades.
The blockbuster, opaque purple colored. L’Ermita (the finest vintages are 1998, the 1995 and 1994) exhibits a full-bodied personality with copious quantities of sweet oak, a boatload of glycerin, and superb blackberry, cassis, and cherry fruit that explodes on the mid-palate and in the finish. The elevated quantities of new oak should become better integrated as the wine ages over the next 15-20 years. This is an exceptionally impressive/expressive wine.
The Numanthia comes from a different terroir with a different clone of Tinta de Toro. The vines for this cuvee range from 70-100 years of age with tiny yields of 1 ton of fruit per acre. The wine undergoes malolactic fermentation in barrel followed by 19 months in new French oak before being bottled unfined and unfiltered. The wine is a glass-coating opaque purple with a killer nose of mineral, pencil lead, wild blueberry, and blackberry liqueur that roars from the glass. On the palate the wine is full-bodied, dense, and already beginning to show complexity within its layers of spicy black fruits. There is immense power, well-concealed ripe tannin, and the well-delinea ted finish lasts for over one minute. This is a sensational effort which in a perfect world should be cellared for a decade and enjoyed over the following 25+ years. However, the elderly among us should not feel guilty about opening a bottle earlier.
Pagos Viejos is a blend of Juan Carlos’s old plots of vine. It demands coaxing from the glass, the broody dark berry, liquorice-tinged fruit remaining bashful under a cloak of French intimating something alluring ten years down the line. The palate is full-bodied with a silky-smooth texture, the oak singing from the same hymn sheet as the precocious fruit that is underpinned by super-fine tannins.
It offers weightless intensity. The Pagos Viejos has fine symmetry and poise towards the finish with just a faint tang of Seville orange marmalade on the aftertaste. Everything is in place - just add time.
The wine was named “Janus” after the Roman god of doors, thresholds (arrivals and departures), communication routes and anything that has a beginning. Janus is a two-faced god who looks towards both the past and the future, just like the wine that carries his name and merges together ancient and modern winemaking techniques perfectly while revealing the best of each.
Deep, rich, ripe and powerful, with slightly earthy-herbal plum and cherry flavours, big and complex, tannic, with a touch of anise on the finish. Complex and fascinating. It will need a good 5- 10 years to shed its tannin, but the concentration is superb.
The Pingus is a glass-coating opaque purple/black color with a bouquet of Asian spices, incense, lavender, truffle, black cherry, and blackberry that soars from the glass. Dense, rich, and seamless, this is a complete, harmonious offering with no rough edges. Dominio de Pingus is in the La Horra region of Ribera del Duero. Owner/winemaker, Peter Sisseck, an oenologist originally from Denmark, started the estate in 1995. The flagship is Pingus. The vines are all over 35 years of age and have been farmed biodynamically since 2005. The wine is 100% Tempranillo typically aged for 14 months in new French barriques. The first vintage of Pingus was in 1995. The estate has been biodynamically farmed since 2000 and, according to Sisseck, has never been treated with fertilizer or pesticides. The Pingus vines are all at least 65 years of age and yields are typically under 1 ton per acre. The wines, made from 100% Tempranillo, are bottled without fining or filtration.
The Remelluri Reserva will be the final vintage blended from grapes sourced outside Remelluri’s bounda ries. It has a well-defined nose of blackberry leaf, mint, bay leaf and balsamic that would benefit from a little more tension. The palate is medium-bodied with fine tannins, crisp acidity, and a lovely, smoke and dried herb-tinged finish with a dash of black pepper. This is quite a “serious” Rioja. A visit to Rioja could not pass without a stop at Bodegas Remelluri, now managed by the pocket dynamo that is Telmo Rodriguez. Remelluri is suffused with a sense of place and history, epitomized by the family’s home that is veiled in a monastic aura, every nook and cranny coveting untold stories from the 14th century when the monks from the Tolono monastery founded a sanctuary on this site.
Do not be fooled, because now this estate is looking towards the future, through Telmo’s eyes.
This includes converting Remelluri’s vineyard to biodynamic and retraining the vines away from the trellis (something that Telmo abhors in Rioja). But one thing that he enacted immediately was the bold decision to convene growers from whom Remelluri had sourced fruit for many years and inform them that this arrangement would cease forthwith. Telmo was effectively putting them out of a job to focus upon his own terroir, and to use his own words, “concentrate the personality of Remelluri.”
Teso La Monja is a winery whose architecture is both simple and beautiful, constructed using quality materials and combined to perfection with the more contemporary and updated vision of enology, enabling the production of great wines. The Teso La Monja winery is in the Toro D.O. where the attraction for wine growers is the wonderful soil that perfectly suits the ancient, pre-phylloxera vines dating back up to 130 years. Marcos Eguren works with a wooden deposit of a most unusual yet ideal shape for elaborating the Teso La Monja wine. Placed at the highest point of the enological preparation system, the oval shape of the deposit foments the biorhythms and contributes towards achieving a more silky smooth, elegant and full-bodied wine.
This is the reference wine of Vega Sicilia, although it shares its special character with the rest of the wines from the winery. It comes from the older vines on the estate and is made with the varieties of tempranillo and more cabernet sauvignon than merlot. Although it is old, the red wine maintains its liveliness thanks to its good acidity level compensated by solid alcohol content.
It has an intense ripe cherry colour, with the lively edge of a wine that is always at its best. The aroma prevails with hints of roast from the wood, and touches of hazelnut from its oxidative evolution from its years in the cask. It has generous tastes of old but clean wood, with dry tannins that are pleasantly embittered by the oak, together with the sensation of its light sweetness of its alcohol. It is a pedigree wine with a long, lasting taste.
The El Pison stands out from its peers. It has a deeper color with a splendid nose that jumps from the glass. Notes of espresso, balsamic, Asian spices, pain grille, mineral, and black cherry lead to a velvety, mouth-filling, deep wine that effortlessly combines elegance with power. It should easily drink well for many years. It simply does not get any better. No visit to Rioja would be complete without a visit to Artadi and maestro Juan Carlos Lopez de Lacalle. The flagship Vina is El Pison which comes from a single Tempranillo vineyard planted in 1945 on pure limestone.
Prices in euros, service included - VAT included
All the wines contain sulphur dioxide and sulphites