Rioja Imperial Gran Reserva, Compañia Vinicola del Norte de España (CVNE) 2015

This is very ripe with blackberries, dried fruit, toasted oak and black licorice on the nose. Full-bodied with ultra-fine, linear tannins and a racy, refined finish. This has fantastic structure and length. It goes on for minutes. It needs time to open and refine even more. One of the best Imperiale Gran Reservas in a very long time. Drink after 2023.

Produced in CVNE’s bodega within a bodega, entirely dedicated to Imperial, this is a superb Gran Reserva that combines Tempranillo with 10% Graciano and 5% Mazuelo. Rich, dense and layered, with fine new French and American oak, wonderful focus, savoury tannins and the depth and concentration to age for a decade or more.

2015 is a riper, warmer year in Rioja, but the vintage has also produced some absolutely classic wines and the Imperial Gran Reserva is certainly one of them. I tasted this wine a couple of years ago when it was still very much an infant, but it has settled in nicely in the interim and is marching nicely towards its point of maturity. I would still certainly hang onto it for several more years in the cellar, as there is just too much complexity still buried here behind the wine’s structural elements and it truly deserves more bottle aging, though it is already a very impressive glass of wine. The wine comes in at an even fourteen percent octane and delivers a pure and complex bouquet of black cherries, sweet dark berries, fresh nutmeg, woodsmoke, complex soil tones, cigar wrapper and a nice mix of both toasted coconut and cedar from its mix of American and French oak barrels. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and very elegant in profile, with nascent velvetiness on the attack, lovely sappiness at the core, fine transparency and grip, fine-grained tannins and a long, complex and impeccably balanced finish. Great juice, but give it just a few more years in the cellar to reach cruising altitude. (Drink between 2030-2080)

Terse, a collision of punctuation, like five exclamation marks wrapped up in curly brackets. A calligraphy tangle of wild fruit and wild herbs. Lavender on the finish. Fantastically vigorous. Vivid. Pumping with juice. Acidity is sweet, intense, clementine, sour cherry, red damson. This is gorgeous. Just bursting to be poured, bursting to be loved, bursting to flood the world and brim the wine glasses and steal hearts and spill its ravishing loveliness into every corner it can find. I fell in love with this baby. It's just taking wing. Drink 2025-2055.