Rioja Reserva 2002: Some Surprises in a Decanter Magazine Panel Tasting
The UK’s Decanter Magazine, hands down the most lucid, comprehensive, and intellectually rigorous wine magazine in English, takes on Rioja Reservas from the complicated 2002 vintage in its most recent panel tasting (September 2007, pp. 77-80). Expectations were low; after picture-perfect ripening conditions in the now-heralded 2001 vintage, 2002 served the region of a cocktail of spring frosts and excessive summer rains that threatened flowering and hampered ideal ripening of the fruit. Nevertheless, the six-member tasting panel emerged “pleasantly surprised.”
As lead taster and Rioja expert John Radford puts it, with typically inventive prose, “There were no really great, head-bangingly, mind-bogglingly fantastic wines, like there would have been if this had been 2001, 2004, or 2005, but overall the quality and value for money are still there - as well as the harmony you look for in Rioja.”
To call itself a Reserva, a Rioja is required by law to age for at least three years at the bodega, including at least one year in Bourdeax-style, 225-liter oak barrels (the most palpable legacy of Rioja’s close historical connection with its northern neighbor).
“Reserva has always had the cachet of being the ‘gold standard’ in Rioja,” Radford writes, “Perhaps not the best wines, but the most reliable.”
“I love the iron fist in the velvet glove you get with really good reservas,” Ed Adams, another panelist, writes, in a phrase often used to describe Pomerol, “Acidity and tannin, but wrapped in soft, velvety fruit.”
The panel tasted 54 wines and, as is the case with all Decanter panels, rated the wines on a twenty-point scale that put them into one of five categories, one to five stars. Of those 54 wines, 28 merited *** (Recommended, 14.5-16.49 pts.), four got **** (Highly Recommended, 16.5-18.49 pts.), and two wines, Bodegas Baigorri and Marqués de Riscal, won ***** (Decanter Award, Outstanding).
How funny that the panel, which tastes wine “blind” (meaning that they are tasted without the panelists’ knowing what they are judging), should award its highest rating to two wines that not only represent two ends of the style spectrum (Baigorri, which the panel describes as “modern, clean, and attractive…well structured modern style”; and Riscal, with “soft, strawberry fruit with spice and cedar…acidity and tannin to last,” descriptors of the classic style), but also come from two of the highest profile, so-called architectural bodegas.
Nice to see two exemplars of the happy union of both style and substance.
September 7th, 2007 at 6:12 am
[…] 2002 Bodegas Baigorri Reserva and 2002 Marqués de Riscal Reserva (Blame it on Rioja): Originally posted in Decanter UK, John Radford gave big points to both the Bodegas Baigorri and Marques de Riscal Reservas at a recent blind tasting of 2002 Rioja Reserves, “There were no really great, head-bangingly, mind-bogglingly fantastic wines, like there would have been if this had been 2001, 2004, or 2005, but overall the quality and value for money are still there - as well as the harmony you look for in Rioja.” […]