1999 Vina Tondonia Blanco Reserva

The 1999 Vina Tondonia Blanco Reserva from their flagship Tondonia vineyard, whose name is as known and almost interchangeable with that of the winery, is the white Reserva bottling. The current vintage for white Gran Reserva (which is easily identifiable as it is sealed with thick red-orange wax) is 1991 and the next one will be 1996, which won’t be sold until 2016. The white Tondonia Reserva, a blend of 90% Viura and 10% Malvasia, spent six years aging in used barriques during which time it was racked every six months and fined with egg whites before bottling unfiltered. It has a bright yellow color and a serious nose full of old waxed furniture, incense, pollen, dried flowers, mushrooms and a chalky, mineral note. The palate has intense, almost pungent flavors, great complexity and balance. It shows incredibly young for its age. A unique white Rioja and a unique white wine. Drink now-2020. 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