The Ten Year ‘Sweet Spot’?: Rioja Gran Reserva from the 1990s and the Question of Age
Of the fifteen Rioja Gran Reservas tasted during “The Evolution of Rioja Gran Reserva,” seminar last week, five were from the 1990s:
5. Baron de Ley Gran Reserva 1998
6. Bodegas Riojanas Monte Real Gran Reserva 1998
7. CVNE Contino Gran Reserva 1996
8. Marqués de Tomares Gran Reserva 1995
9. Bodegas Muga Prado Enea Gran Reserva 1994
New kid on the block Baron de Ley, a single estate wine founded in the 1980s whose wines are made from all Rioja Baja fruit, was the ripest of the bunch, especially at first, but even that new bodega’s ‘98 Gran Reserva, which bore the unmistakable toasty fruit character of a wine from Rioja’s warmest subzone, had begun to take on some of the nuanced traits of fine aged Tempranillo–cedar and leather and tobacco.
Bodegas Riojanas‘ ‘98 Monte Real, from my point of view a label that doesn’t get quite as much attention as it deserves, perfectly bursted with an impressively tart red cherry attack that foretold potential for further development (acidity being perhaps the most important element of balanced aging in the long haul), but finished seamlessly.
Contino’s ‘96 Gran Reserva, the wine which Contino winemaker Jesus Madrazo served at his own wedding and which I am considering serving at my own, should such an event ever occur, had a remarkable balance of abundant red fruit and superb cedary elegance.
The final two wines of the 1990s group, Marqués de Tomares Gran Reserva 1995 and the Muga Prado Enea Gran Reserva 1994 showcased beautifully the vintages that put Rioja back on the map after a string of difficult vintages, in classic fashion: the rewards of patience for wines aged in American oak, which can be vegetal and edgy when young but extraordinarily soft and seductive with time (nose to glass followed by alluring discovery; return to the glass, something else there, another discovery; repeat; repeat).
What they all had in common was that they had all hit a stride, so to speak. Each offered differences in style and flavor profiles, and each had its own personality. But each had, let’s say, a generosity, a roundness to them, a community of warm and welcoming inns encountered on a cold winter’s night, each serving a different main course but each warm and welcoming to the wary traveler.
“Is there a sweet spot that [Rioja Gran Reservas] reach after ten years’ aging?” I asked my fellow panelists. “I don’t think we know the answer,” María José López de Heredia answered, “So much of this is still a mystery to us.”
What is certain is that it pays to wait. With a mandatory five-year minimum head start and an impressively reasonable age-to-price ratio, Rioja Gran Reserva arguably make the world’s best case for testing the 10-year sweet spot theory. Cellaring wine may be regarded as a antiquated relic or as an unrealistic pursuit in the age of instant gratification, but with wine culture in this country–and internationally–growing more and more sophisticated and with tastings like these spreading the gospel of patience so deliciously, we may just see things changing down the road.
A Riojaphile can hope.