1996 - R. Lopez de Heredia Tondonia Blanco Reserva, Rioja

The 1996 Vina Tondonia Blanco Reserva offers dried honey, lemon curd, tangerine and honeysuckle on the nose. The palate is crisp and honeyed on the entry, counterbalanced by its racy acidity, leading towards a waxy textured finish with subtle almond and dried pineapple notes lingering long in the mouth. Superb. I have adored, indeed occasionally worshiped, the wines of Lopez de Heredia for many years, so I am not ashamed to admit that visiting both their vineyard and their winery was a pilgrimage. Founded by Rafael Lopez de Heredia y Landeta in 1877, it has withstood the tide of corporatization and homogeneity, and epitomizes timeless, artisan winemaking in their own individual, almost solipsistic manner. Technology is noticeable by its absence here. For example, to quote her sister Maria-Jose at a tasting that I subsequently attended in London: “Indigenous yeasts have adapted to high temperatures. To control the temperature during fermentation, we open doors and windows” and “malolactic is the invention of modern winemakers.” I had to check whether this was 2012 or 1912. If you were to award points for charisma, then this producer would be in a league of its own. That would count for nothing if their wines were not distinguished, individual, long-lived and above all, delicious. It is commonly known that if you are seeking bags of fruit and lashings of oak, this is not the place to come. My views and these scores might be irrational to someone with a penchant for lush, voluptuous Rioja. Lopez de Heredia is the apotheosis of traditional, classic wines: taut, fresh, bucolic, utterly charming and amazingly long-lived. I spent two or three hours with winemaker Mercedes Lopez de Heredia, who was celebrating her birthday with, appropriately enough, a bottle of Tondonia Gran Reserva from her year of birth. I urge readers to access the video I took of Mercedes explaining the vineyard in her own breathless style. In the meantime, I will crack on with the wines “Wines s

(aged for six years in American oak barrels and then held in bottle for at least five years before release) Bright yellow-gold. Dried pear, peach pit, vanilla, marzipan and toasted brioche on the deeply perfumed, expansive nose. Chewy, densely packed and focused, offering bitter pear skin, hazelnut and anise flavors and a refreshingly bitter hint of lemon pith. Stretches out slowly with air and finishes spicy, smoky and very long, with repeating anise and pear notes and dry, minerally cut. This complex wine benefits a lot from aeration.