2008 Rioja Reserva

(mostly tempranillo, with garnacha, graciano, viura and malvasia): Ruby-red. Redcurrant, cherry, rose pastille and spicecake on the highly perfumed nose and in the mouth. Silky, sweet and penetrating, with slow-building tannins and excellent finishing cut and length. A very successful wine for this difficult vintage, and it's built to reward at least another ten years of aging.

Before broaching present releases, The 2008 Reserva will be the final vintage blended from grapes sourced outside Remelluri’s boundaries. Perhaps my score is parsimonious, but intuition tells me that great Reservas in the mold of the 1976 lie in the years ahead. 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 that needs a little more joie-de-vivre. Drink 2014-2024. A visit to Rioja could not pass without a stop at Bodegas Remelluri, now managed by the pocket dynamo that is Telmo Rodriguez. I jumped in his muddy 4x4 to inspect his high altitude vines up on the Sierre de Tolono mountains and isolated, uncultivated plots of potentially great terroir that Telmo is keen to exploit in the future (see video). 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. Though I was impressed by their current releases, the phrase “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet” kept running through my mind, because it will take time for Telmo to implement his winemaking tenets that have been honed through extensive experience both in Spain and abroad. This includes converting Remelluri’s vineyard to biodynamism and re-training 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 in order to focus upon his own terroir, and to use his own words, “concentrate the personality of Remelluri.” This culling of out-sourced fruit is effective from the 2009 vintage. To compensate these growers, Telmo offered his experience and contacts to assist them in creating their own label. He was encouraged by the positive response and galvanized growers to take responsibility for their own wine; he was essentially sowing the seeds of his own philosophy. So let us begin with this label, because it is well worth seeking out. Importer: De Maison Selections, Chapel Hill, NC; tel. (919) 933-4245; www.demaisonselections.com