2002 Vina Tondonia Reserva

Dark blackish ruby. Lots of rich velvety, animal development but lots of precision and lively acidity too. Just a bit coarse. (JR)

(75% tempranillo, 15% garnacha, 5% graciano and 5% mazuelo): Vivid ruby. Musky red fruits, cherry, pipe tobacco and a hint of vanilla on the fragrant nose. Juicy and tightly focused, offering tangy raspberry and bitter cherry flavors and a touch of candied rose. Finishes on a tangy note, with a hint of blood orange, repeating florality and silky tannins coming up late. This is ready to drink but I wouldn't be surprised to see it age gracefully.

The 2002 Vina Tondonia Reserva is a blend of 75% Tempranillo, 15% Garnacho and 10% between Mazuelo and Graciano sourced from their Tondonia vineyard located in a large meander of the Ebro River on the outskirts of Haro. It is aged for six years in used barrels, racked twice per year during its upbringing and fined with egg whites before being bottled unfiltered. It has a slightly reduced nose that benefits from air contact, with shy aromas of cherries in liqueur, tea leaves, fine leather, game, blood, spice box and cigar ash, showing some evolution. The light to medium-bodied palate is balanced, with high acidity, but perhaps a little fragile, showing the difficulties of the vintage, as 2002 was a very difficult year in Rioja. 250,000 bottles were produced. Drink 2014-2019. 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