American staves, French heads, and leaping raspberry fruit: Tasting at Bodegas LAN
Thursday, November 5th, 2009
Named for the three provinces in which Rioja, the wine, can be made (Logroño, Álava, and Navarra), Bodegas LAN is still a relative newcomer to the region (founded in 1974) and a bodega which, in my experience, has come a long way, even in the last eight years.
I’ve written before about the lovely and supple LAN Reserva 2001. On a visit last month to the Rioja Alta bodega, the ‘04 LAN Reserva showed signs of developing the same kinds of leathery notes so pleasant in the ‘01, albeit with slightly more alcohol than I remember from its 2001 predecessor. LAN Crianza 2005 showed agreeable red berry fruit and would appeal to many who enjoy a clean, lively wine with just the right amount of structure.
As for the LAN 2003 Gran Reserva, I picked up a lot of sweet fruit (probably owing to that summer’s oppresive heat) as well as a pretty notes of both cedar and baking spices like clove and nutmeg—traits I attributed to LAN’s unusual cooperage. The winery uses a combination of French oak (associated with baking spices) and American oak (accounting, I suspect, for the wine’s cedar-ilke aromas). But rather than age the wines in barrels made entirely of one type of oak or the other and then blending, at LAN the blend begins as soon as the wine enters the barrel: the bodega’s trademark barrica has American oak staves and French oak heads.
The remaining three wines we tasted were the LAN’s big hitters: Viña Lanciano Reserva 2004, from a single 72 hectare estate; LAN Edición Limitada 2005, aged five months in French oak and four months in Russian oak; and finally, Culmen Reserva 2004, which comes from an old plot of 40-60 year old vines from the Lanciano estate and spends 18 months in new French oak.
Edición Limitada 2005 was firm and offered very, very ripe raspberry and blackberry aromas, and the Culmen had the earthy, licorice, and mineral notes typical of a high-intensity, high-qulaity old vines Tempranillo/Graciano blend—devastating in his opulence but definitely a bruiser.
Whereas the first of these two wines, both clocking in a 14% alcohol, were delicious essays in extraction and expression, I found the Lanciano ‘04—”Culmen’s son,” our guide, Marian Saseta, called it—more along the lines of something I could actually finish.
Viña Lanciano has tannins aplenty, mind you, and would probably benefit from a few years in grandma’s basement to bring out its true subtle self, but, man alive, did this wine have some extraordinary aromatics: a very subtle, wet earthy character below leaping raspberry fruit. A wine to look out for.
Photo: The barrel room at Bodegas LAN (by John Barkley)
