2005 R. López de Heredia Rioja Reserva Viña Bosconia- Spain, La Rioja, La Rioja Alta, Rioja (4/22/2018)
Day 1: Opened a few hours ago. Nose of summer sausage, leather, muted fruits. The palate is thin and watered down. Going to hold off on this wine until day 2 as seems flawed. No score.
Day 2: Much more open for business but still not ready to be properly reviewed.
Day 3: Rounding into a significantly better wine. Burnt toast, green olives, raspberries, tobacco and rustic notes. This went from a watered down wine to quite concentrated in flavors. Some smoked meats and sour cherries on the palate. Not a long finish but flavorful. I will be trying this wine on day 4 and 5.
Current recommendation: If you pop and pour this disappointment will set in as many notes indicate. I would have dumped this at a tasting. This is an extremely young wine and will need a decade minimum. 90-92.
Day 4: Many characteristics as day 3 but acidity is sharp. Picking up some nice minerality and subtle spices. Rounding into form as an Old World Rioja wine. 92 plus
Recommendation: Hold for 5 to 10 years. This is why I started doing the 3 day wine review business model. So many of these wines are not pop and pour and this is a prime example of that. How a critic can score this on a quick sample taste is beyond me. (92 pts.)
Totally agree. Not sure the 2005 is ready yet. I’m holding onto half a case. We have tasted one bottle so far and I would agree though we decanted about 2 hours before drinking and it opened up after another hour or so.
Of all the traditional producers, it seems like LdH takes the longest to come around. The 2001 vintage went into a shutdown phase a few years back and I expect this may be hitting that, too. Great advice on the long decant!
I know this may sound crazy but I think the reservas and gran reservas don’t hit their stride until 20-30 years after bottling. I always like to taste a bottle after release and then put the rest away.
Thanks, John. I am a big fan of Lopez, and have had the good fortune of drinking many of their Gran Reservas from vintages from the 50s through the 90s. Yet I have also tried a handful of these “younger” Reservas, and have had an experience similar to yours on days one and two. Previously I had assumed the quality discrepancy was a function of “Gran Reserva vs. Reserva”, but recently I have begun to wonder whether it is more about air time. Thanks for confirming that it is the latter.
Is this 5 day routine a common technique you use when grading wines? How do you feel oxidation effects the wines, and how do you feel it provides insight into ageability and what a wine will become with age based on your personal experiences?
I do this when I host tastings, and it’s often quite revealing. With wines that are made to age, some that show little on the first night really blossom after a day or two. (I always refrigerate.) I found that with the 2005 Olga Raffault - Chinon recently, which was much better on day four (notes posted here). Sometimes decanting the first night just isn’t enough to bring out what the wine has to offer. I also felt my day-two rankings for 2013 Barolos were more meaningful than those the night of the main tasting (notes).
Sometimes wines do show oxidation after a day or two, even refrigerated. Others show marked VA. I certainly regard that as a less good omen for the long term, though not necessarily a deal-breaker.
As for Lopez de Heredia wines in particular, they’re made in such an oxidative way – such long periods in oak – that oxidation after opening isn’t that much of an issue, in my experience.
[quoteIs this 5 day routine a common technique you use when grading wines? How do you feel oxidation effects the wines, and how do you feel it provides insight into ageability and what a wine will become with age based on your personal experiences?][/quote]
I have been doing 3 days but this needed 5. Usually the 2010s and beyond need several days to come around. I did have a week ago that needed to be consumed on day 1 from 2012.
I’ve found that, with the RLdH wines, it’s useful to re-frame much of the way I think about vintages. For example, while the 2005 Bosconia was grown almost 13 years ago, it is a relatively recently released vintage. In fact, here in the Seattle area, it’s still the current release vintage (although in areas with real wine distributors, such as CA and NY, they kept up and moved to 2006 vintage last year…). So I’ve come to think in terms of elapsed time from when the vintage was released, rather than from the vintage year (since they hold these back for so long before release - for good reason).
For the Gran Reservas, most vintages will be drinking quite well long after most of our meat-suits have called it quits. And I believe the best vintages, such as '47, '64, '81, will be darn near immortal. For the Reservas, my experience doesn’t go back beyond the 1990s. I believe that there will be more aging variability across the Reserva vintages than the GRs - which makes sense given that they only release GRs in vintages where they feel the wines are especially strong. However, I suspect that - in good vintages (as I believe 2005 is) - that the Reservas will still be drinking well 20 - 30 years from vintage year. That being said, if you are looking for relatively recent Reserva vintages to drink now, I would steer you toward 2003 and 2004. I’m drinking more of those vintages at this point in time than I am the previous vintages (say, 1998-2002).
On last point that tends to be forgotten – the aging potential of the Blancos. I maintain that the Tondonia Blancos (both GR and Reserva) will age as well (if not better) than the corresponding vintages of the reds. Gravonia, not as much, but still longer than most people give them credit for.
Michael - some of what you said applies to Rioja other than LdH. I’ve had Riscal for example, back to the 1920s, and many of the classic bodegas from the 1940s and 50s and 60s. Many, and I’d say even most, of those wines will last for many years. It’s only when you’re coming from a CA “drink it fast” perspective that you need to re-calibrate your idea of vintages. And some of those older CA wines aged very nicely as well. It’s not something that people look for today so much, but it’s a nice thing to have.
And ditto the whites. Marques de Murrieta Y’Gay blanco from the 1970s is quite wonderful. They’re older than LdH and they’re still making good wine.
I would encourage folks to give these wines air before drinking on day one. Waiting until day 2-3-4 is a curiosity, but not practicable. If you treat the wines properly on day one you should be ok. In another thread a long time ago, some very experienced wine drinkers said they felt you could pop and pour rioja, which I think is dead wrong for aged Rioja. These wines not infrequently seem dead when first opened. Most blossom with 2-4 hours of air, and I’ve had very few that have faded unless truly dead. Quite similar in this regard to old Barolo/Barbaresco.
Day 5: Still has the laser like acidity. More concentration of flavors and has gone from a very light/watered down affair to great fruit and earth components. As many of complemented on Wine Berserkers these wines are long term agers.
Final recommendation: Drink on day 5 or hold for 10 years.
Arv than bring it in a decade. In MN we can bring in decanted wine but yes other places have different rules. In MN you can actually bring home wine you have not consumed. It is amazing all the different rules and regulations within states on alcohol.