La Vendimia 2008

After a fairly indulgent Christmas/New year period and start of a new year, I usually think it’s time for a couple of weeks of detox. Well not detox really, just a couple of weeks to a month of not drinking. Given I’ve got almost a month of eating and drinking in Spain coming up in a couple of weeks, it seems like the wise thing to do. So it will continue to be fairly quiet here at Tinto y Blanco for a couple of weeks…

Remelluri Reserva 2005

This is another wine that shows the differences between the 2004 and 2005 vintages in Rioja. Both are great vintages in my book, but they are so for very different reasons. 2004 is a very long lived vintage, but it isn’t really giving a lot of joy at the moment. Its full of promises, but those bottles will have to survive the late night, drunken cellar raids and ‘I just want to see how it’s travelling’ trials. The 05 on the other hand is just a joy to smell and drink at the moment, but it has a long and full life ahead of it too.

La Perla del Priorat ‘Noster’ 2005

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I’ve got a couple of entry level on the tasting bench at the moment, this is the first. This was a big hit for me last year, a wine from Priorat at this price level and quality was quite rare at the time. But now wines in the $40-$60 price bracket are the must have item for many importers. And who’s complaining, seeing as the top wines from the region are going up again this year? There doesn’t seem to be one style at the price point, some are big rounded, easy drinking things, others are a bit tighter and focused. This falls into the later camp…

Sierra Cantabria Crianza 2004

The kitchen renos are almost done, as you can see in the photo the tiling still needs to be finished off. But at least I’m not cooking in the lounge room any more…The guys use a lot of sorting to get these wine in this shape, both on the vine and in the winery. 15 months in a mix of french andamerican oak, most of it older barrels up to 3 years old. I like this kind of forumla, you get the great fruit and the benifit of oak, but not a huge impact.

R. López de Heredia Viña Tondonia Gran Reserva Blanco 1987

This is a note that has been in draft mode for about 6 months now. Not because the wine is bad or anything like that, its just an increadbly hard wine to describe. Reading an article in the NY Times, I thought it was about time to post it. I bought this bottle after coming back from Rioja and visiting López de Heredia and literaly being overwhelmed by how these people make this crazy wine. By all logic is should be well past it by the time it’s released, I mean who has heard of white wine kept in casks for nine and a half years then in bottle for another 13 or so years before its released? The people who make it say the secret is the acid, and you can clearly see that when you taste it. It looks oxidized, but tastes like it could do another 10 years standing on it’s head. It sounds like it should be musty and mouldy, but its fresh and floral.

Bodegas Muga Reserva 2004

Robert Parker (and Jay Miller) states that Muga is one of his favourite bodegas in Rioja in a couple of his tasting notes, and it’s one of the few things that I agree with him on. Not that there is anything wrong with that, the world would be a rather boring place if we all agreed. I’d love to sit down and go through a couple of bottles with the big fella, he seems like he’d be a laugh with a few in him.

Latente Crianza 2004

Here’s anther good Rioja Crianza in $20-30 bracket, this time from Ce Soir Imports. This is about the price where you get an interesting, wood aged Rioja in Australia. We are fortunate that we don’t have the same issue as the guys in the UK. There is truckloads of cheap and not so cheerful Rioja in the supermarkets and booze shops over there. Kind of like NZ sauv blanc here…

Bodegas Roda ‘Roda I’ 2005

While I thought the 2004 Roda Reserva was a touch better than the 05, it’s the opposite with Roda I. I did a fair bit of preparation with this bottle: decanted for 3 hours, then back in the bottle, off to La Luna for dinner, back into a decanter while we drank a handy half bottle of Ca del Bosco, then into the glass. Overall, the 05 is a more structured and complete wine at this stage, it has also eaten just about all the oak thrown at it. The 04 is obsessed with fruit, tannins and oak at the moment (in a very good way!) and needs time to integrate.

Roda Reserva 2005

I couldn’t help myself, I just needed to have another look at the 2005 Rodas. I find Roda to be quite closed at the moment, you need to have a quick look straight after opening the bottle or a big ol’ decant (or about 2 to 3 years in the cellar) to really show what its made of. But that’s not anything new, just about every vintage of Roda and Roda II has been the same. The trainspotters will notice the newRioja label on the back of the bottle too. This year’s blend is 81% Tempranillo, 9% Craciano and 9% Garnarcha, 1% rounding error…

Lanzaga mini vertical - 2002 to 2006

Earlier this year I was lucky enough to have a look at 5 vintages of one of the standout Rioja wines available in Australia, Lanzaga from Compania del Vinos de Telmo Rodríguez . I tend use the full name of the company these days, as when I visited in February it became very clear that partnership between Pablo Eguzkiza and Telmo Rodríguez has been a key ingredient to building this now very well known company. I still have a load of stuff to write up from my last trip, one of the highlights being a day looking the company’s many operations in Rioja…