Lopez de Heredia, Vina Bosconia, Rioja, 1976
This weekend, we continue to take you back-vintage, this time to Rioja, Spain, 1976.
The back vintage wine program at Restaurant Latour has been a crushing success (crush, wine, crush wine, get it?) It’s been such a great experience to open up these masterpieces from our cellar, and to let our guests experience such an array of older, yet classical wines that they may otherwise not have the experience to taste. Not because they can’t, but because in 240 pages of red wine, for instance, the 1976, Lopez de Heredia, Vina Bosconia, Rioja, might not catch your eye. Now, it will.
Tempranillo (80%), Garnacho (15%), Mazuelo and Graciano (the remainder) all from our own vineyards. This wine gets barrel aged for 8 years (again, hello longevity!)
AGEING PERIOD:
John Gilman, from View of the Cellar:
Given Rioja’s brilliant historical legacy of great estates, it is sad to think that in terms of producing truly classic and traditionally styled Rioja wines. Lopez de Heredia remains virtually the last bodega to have withstood the tides of modernization and changing fashions in taste that have transformed so many other traditionally important estates in Rioja…but as Maria Jose Lopez de Heredia comments, “we do not want to have to defend ourselves for the way we make our wines, for this style was what made the region of Rioja famous in the first place, and which has been the foundation for our family winery since it was founded in 1877 – why would we want to change anything?”
I just want to take this time to tell Maria that we don’t want them to change anything either. Rioja is Rioja, just as Bordeaux is Bordeaux . Rioja represents all that is great about the terroir that essentially is, Rioja! In a country transformed over the past decades, it is comforting to know that Bodega Lopez de Heredia will be forever steeped in tradition You can not say that about everywhere else in the world.
The story and history of such a cultured bodega should be enough to seal the deal on a glass of this special bottle, but if that’s not enough, I will provide you a tasting note. And a tasting note like this may just make you weak at the knees. Feel free to collapse at Restaurant Latour. Thank you CellarTracker, my ultimate guide into the taste palates from those around the world:
“Faded very pale red; light earth tones with ever so slight subtle red berries and clean rocky minerals; super elegant, good tart berry acidity with faint tannins but not lacking for it, silky, unpretentious yet clearly something special; complex, very nice balance–everything a great aged red should be. This grew on me and kept begging me to drink more. I could not deny her.”
And we won’t deny you.
Cellar Musings 