1975 Vina Real Gran Reserva

1975 was officially a very good vintage for Rioja, but CVNE lowered its internal classification to simply "Good," which might explain why the 1975 Viña Real Gran Reserva was bottled in May 1980, unusually early at a time when the wines used to spend at least six years in barrel before bottling. So, what was happening in the world? Well, way before the Internet era, Led Zeppelin managed to sell out three concerts at Madison Square Garden in just four hours and Queen had the hit single "Bohemian Rhapsody." It was the year of the Watergate scandal, Gerald Ford was President in the U.S., Angola became independent from Portugal and Australian television switched to color, while NBC aired the first episode of "Saturday Night Live," and Spanish dictator Francisco Franco died in Madrid. People that were born that year include Drew Barrymore, Eva Longoria, Jamie Oliver, Angelina Jolie and David Beckham. The top films of the year were “Jaws,” “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.” The nose of that 1975 was plain weird, especially for a red wine, as it reeked of green asparagus! I've had this wine before, and it's fascinating, moving from the asparagus to shiitake mushrooms, clearly herbal and vegetal. Fascinating, but I don't know what to make of this. The winery tells me their experience with all the 1975s they have uncorked is consistently the same. I wonder about a bottle I have in my cellar. I might uncork it one of these days.