Remelluri Remelluri Rioja Reserva 2016 750ml

Ripe and beautiful with ripe berries, hazelnuts and spice. Some crushed stone, too. Full-bodied, yet tight and focused. Generous and racy. Goes on for minutes. Drink or hold.

The estate red 2015 Reserva was produced with Tempranillo, Garnacha and Graciano from their 86 hectares of vineyards. It’s from an early harvest after a warm and dry year that achieved perfect ripeness with some rain at the end of the cycle. It fermented with indigenous yeasts in stainless steel and oak vats and matured in barrel for 21 months. It combines youth with development, power with elegance and comes through as clean and defined, with a medium to full-bodied palate, focused flavors and a dry but lively finish. 259,400 bottles produced. It was bottled in April and May 2018.

There's a bright, buoyant feel to this fluid red. Its frame of mandarin orange peel acidity and chalky tannins is well-meshed with a dark and expressive core of macerated blackberry and black plum skin. Fragrant notes of leather, dried flowers, mountain herbs, licorice and paprika add depth to the fruit profile and linger on the finish. Tempranillo, Garnacha and Graciano. Drink now through 2040. 25,000 cases made, 2,500 cases imported.

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. (Josh Raynolds)

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.