2004 R. López de Heredia Vina Bosconia Reserva

The 2004 Vina Bosconia Reserva is a blend of 80% Tempranillo, 15% Garnacho and the remaining 5% Mazuelo and Graciano aged for five years in used barrels, racked twice per year and fined with egg whites before being bottled unfiltered. Dark ruby-colored, with notes of beef blood, iron, antique shop, incense, blood orange and a touch of volatile acidity, the palate is very fresh, with good concentration, clear flavors and enough grip and fruit to age gracefully. A perfumed and feminine great Rioja. The Bosconia vineyard wines are the only ones from Lopez de Heredia bottled in Burgundy bottles. Drink now-2024. Lopez de Heredia has a problem many wineries would like to have; they are selling their wines very fast, they don’t have enough stock to cover market demand and some of the wines are highly allocated. I’m not talking about their historical vintages here – which are also available on the price list – I’m only talking about the current releases. Everything is aggravated by the fact that some of the top wines are only produced in exceptional years: for example, the next Vina Tondonia Gran Reserva will be 1995 and won’t be released until 2015. For the white version of Tondonia Gran Reserva there is a gap between 1991, the last vintage sold, and 1996, the next one, so who knows when it will see the light! As a result, there are few wines to taste this year and we should be patient. All wines are produced from their own vineyards in Haro, each from a different plot that names the wine, produced and aged following the most orthodox traditional methods (visiting the winery is like time travelling to 100 years ago!) with no stainless steel or new oak to be found anywhere. In fact their vats and barriques are old, some of them very old. All their wines are aged for a long time before being released and keep their alcohol levels at around 12-12.5% with good acidity. They have tirelessly kept the traditional flame burning. At one point I heard Maria Jose Lopez de Heredia referring to them as “the last of the Mohicans.” That’s not the case anymore. The sad news is that Don Pedro Lopez de Heredia passed away in 2013. Born in 1928, he was the nephew of the Bodega’s founder and father of the current fourth generation in charge of the family winery, Maria Jose, Mercedes and Julio Cesar. Imported by Think Global, Santa Barbara, CA; www.thinkglobalwines.com