My 50th at the Ledbury (The Ledbury, London): Mid garnet, starting to show some orange at the rim. Classic mature VR nose, a little coffee/mocha, red fruit, leather, spice and a drop of orange oil. Silky. Puts on some weight with air and despite an early double decant holds up well for seven or eight hours. *****
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Excellent and really interesting to follow over three hours of air time. Savory with almost no fruit remaining but there is so much going on here- aged tea, desert herbs, blood, cranberry, wild mushrooms- a fantastic, graceful, and funky old rioja. This was considered a good but not great vintage, but I have always loved the nuances here, plus it’s my birth year.
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Boxing Day Lunch at Home with Friends (Our House, Hong Kong): Decanted for 2 hours then drank over the next three. Colour is totally transparent brick-red but no visual hint of tiredness. Initially reticent nose that you have to chase at first so you need to give this time to breathe and it was at its best after 3 hours....spice, beef broth, Japanese sea urchin, umami...very savoury and complex. Palate is fresh, bright tangy cranberry on entry that segues into savoury, umami-driven multi-layered complexity. So velvety but diaphanously light as it opens in the glass. Ultimately unfolds to delicate, feminine, ethereal, will o' the wisp diaphanous layers.....really multi-dimensional. WOW! Thunderous, rumbling bass notes of endless resonance and reverberance inside the head on the finish. Silence creating...which is my highest compliment for a wine. I paid a $300 premium for this bottle at a charity auction but both the charity and I got our money's worth.
1973 riojas can be highly variable but this particular bottle was fantastic! Very clean and fresh and showing the graceful side of the vintage. This is a birth year wine for me so I'll be drinking them for some time...it's always nice when you get a great bottle like this.
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Obviously fantastic, but in decline. It's sadly dying. This was a difficult vintage apparently (hot). It's relatively quiet on the nose, but it has big body, wonderful acidity, brilliant intensity, power and utter savoury deliciousness. And my colleague says "precision" - absolutely correct. The real deal. Rioja ageworthiness at its finest. Drink up - this is the end of the road for this beauty.
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An amazing bottle of wine that shows the complexity and longevity of Rioja. Pop n pour to a kaleidoscopic nose of old leather, camp fire, incense with mature earthy red fruits. The palate has excellent richness and energy, and is deeply flavored echoing the nose. Should hold but why wait.
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Garnet colour Nose is explosive....so fresh still...cedar, incense, flowers, tart red fruit, earth and mineral Palate is pure, integrated and lively....cranberry, soy, tobacco, mineral, incense, leather, cedar and earth. Finish is long....layered and complex.
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Another great bottle of this wine. The 73 and 76 at VR are lovely wines. This 73 was in really good condition and ran an outstanding 75 really close as wotd. Like the best Vina Real's this had a richness and opulence to it. Really distinguished wine.
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Mature Rioja @ Medlar (Medlar, London): When it's good, the 73 is very good and this bottle is no exception. Lovely and typically 73. All the leather, spice, orange peel and warm fireside. Opens and puts on a little coffee ground weight. Long and luscious. *****
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Had it at Decanter FWE Rioja Masterclass in London. What a great experience - coffee and tobacco dominate, some overripe red fruits and great overall aging flavours but still very approchable and a lot of fun.
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This was a real surprise - needed lots of air but eventually more than held its own against plenty of Rioja big-hitters from the 50s and 60s. Initially a metalic nose and blood taste, with air this developed a sweet toffee note and lovely salinity. Lively with fantastic freshness from salinity on finish. Kept on improving for 3hrs. Wonderful and really under the radar. Shows just how well this bottling improves with age. Highly recommended. Drink to 2040. 95+pts
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2016 Harwood-fest (Harwood Arms, London): Mid garnet. Mocha, coffee ground and orange peel nose with some faded fireside spice. Lovely harmonious mature Rioja palate. Complex and satisfying. A little muddy as the fine sediment starts to pour. A good but not great bottle of this. ****
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Red and black cherry, black raspberry, funk on the nose, sweetness on the palate, with fresh ground coffee, moist earth, textural tinge of acid on the finish. Umami richness to the nose; they did remarkable things with tempranillo. A youthful bottle that still had an opportunity to take on additional complexity. No decant on this one but consumed intermittently over three hours. Consumed with miso glazed monkfish, spanish rice, and sauteed kale and garlic. 93+
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[PWS' CVNE W Dinner at Bellota, Melbourne] Translucent medium deep garnet, orange edge. Mature bouquet of black & red cherry, black raspberry with black olive, licorice, leather, spice, truffles & smoke; later, some fig & date notes. Medium plus weight, moderately deep & intense though not very concentrated; traces of remnant tannins receding as some acidity starts to show through; mid palate fruit dries out with time in glass. Quite long tangy finish. Perhaps not as good a bottle as those reported elsewhere.
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Purchased from the estate a few years back. Cork was in good shape and the juice, too, with only a little orange around the rim. Textbook 1973...very mellow and soft and more advanced than the 1966 vintage. This is my birth year wine, and I'm going to open one a year until they run out, but this seems to be on a slow decline given the paucity of fruit and the slightly hollow finish so it's probably time to drink up if you don't have that particular circumstance.
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Fantastic wine for its age. Mirror previous comments of being bright and fresh on the attack, good acidity, medium body, with a long lingering finish. Superb.
Another disappointing 73... Bought online at auction & while this was in better shape than the California cab of the same vintage, it was well past it's prime. It's garnet color was appropriate but after tasting across the span of 7-8 hrs decanting, it never got beyond the port-like wine oxidation had made it become.
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Another Saturday at Knightsbridge - mostly blind (Northbrook, IL): Blind tasting. Clearly an old, Old World wine made in a classic, acid-driven style. Lean, elegant and shroomy, with great earth aromas and flavors with impressive textures. Bit of tar and dried herb elements throughout. Slightly drying on end, I correctly identified as from 1973 (when given 3 choices) given some similarities to a recent bottle of 1973 Heredia.
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My 40th at The Ledbury (The Ledbury, London): Mid garnet to a browny orange at the rim. Gorgeous. Light, fragrant, almost ethereal quality to the nose with freshly cut orange peel, bergamot and light spices on the nose. Bright and fresh on the attack, good acidity and medium body, long and lingering finish. Just stunning. *****
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Dinner with R&Y and B&A (Home): Mid orange to light garnet, taking on colour and weight with air. That lovely sweet-fruited orange peel nose of old Rioja with a gentle scent of warm spices wafting through mediterranean air. Rounded, full, harmonious, complex and just down right lovely. Very complete - just what a mature wine should be. Nothing brash, just oozing charm and interest. Showing slightly better than previous bottle shared by JM@Contino. *****
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Having just enjoyed the Ygay 1964 this was going to have to be good and boy did it deliver. Looking more its age than the Ygay with some fading at the rim. The smoked and orange peel notes were there on the nose but it had a lovely fresh mouthfeel. Old and graceful but still lively in the mouth. This had been double decanted in the morning, I believe, but it continued to improve in the glass. Just like a bottle consumed at Contino last year this continued to get better and was a pleasure to drink again. Really classic old Rioja. (95+)
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Contino (Rioja): Mid brick-red to browning orange at the rim. Very scented orange rind on the nose. Good attack, very rounded and expansive on the mid-palate. Surprisingly long. lovely. **** We poured the remains from our glasses back in to the bottle, and did the same with the 81 Contini, taking them back to the hotel to finish off with dinner. After the 5 hour semi-double decant, this held up well and continued to improve to ****1/2+, overtaking the 81 Contino that started to fade a little and lose complexity. I'm pretty sure they don't make them like this anymore.
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Not a great bottle (i.e. the 1970 Tondonia or 1981 Vina Real) but very nice with some resolved notes of classic Rioja, plus an odd resemblance to gewurz (close your eyes and taste).
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1/13/2023 - SimonG wrote: 95 Points
My 50th at the Ledbury (The Ledbury, London): Mid garnet, starting to show some orange at the rim. Classic mature VR nose, a little coffee/mocha, red fruit, leather, spice and a drop of orange oil. Silky. Puts on some weight with air and despite an early double decant holds up well for seven or eight hours. *****
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7/25/2022 - BillBell73 Likes this wine:
Excellent and really interesting to follow over three hours of air time. Savory with almost no fruit remaining but there is so much going on here- aged tea, desert herbs, blood, cranberry, wild mushrooms- a fantastic, graceful, and funky old rioja. This was considered a good but not great vintage, but I have always loved the nuances here, plus it’s my birth year.
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12/26/2019 - Goldstone Likes this wine: 95 Points
Boxing Day Lunch at Home with Friends (Our House, Hong Kong): Decanted for 2 hours then drank over the next three. Colour is totally transparent brick-red but no visual hint of tiredness. Initially reticent nose that you have to chase at first so you need to give this time to breathe and it was at its best after 3 hours....spice, beef broth, Japanese sea urchin, umami...very savoury and complex. Palate is fresh, bright tangy cranberry on entry that segues into savoury, umami-driven multi-layered complexity. So velvety but diaphanously light as it opens in the glass. Ultimately unfolds to delicate, feminine, ethereal, will o' the wisp diaphanous layers.....really multi-dimensional. WOW! Thunderous, rumbling bass notes of endless resonance and reverberance inside the head on the finish. Silence creating...which is my highest compliment for a wine. I paid a $300 premium for this bottle at a charity auction but both the charity and I got our money's worth.
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7/30/2019 - BillBell73 Likes this wine:
1973 riojas can be highly variable but this particular bottle was fantastic! Very clean and fresh and showing the graceful side of the vintage. This is a birth year wine for me so I'll be drinking them for some time...it's always nice when you get a great bottle like this.
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9/12/2018 - ricard Likes this wine: 95 Points
Obviously fantastic, but in decline. It's sadly dying. This was a difficult vintage apparently (hot). It's relatively quiet on the nose, but it has big body, wonderful acidity, brilliant intensity, power and utter savoury deliciousness. And my colleague says "precision" - absolutely correct. The real deal. Rioja ageworthiness at its finest. Drink up - this is the end of the road for this beauty.
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6/17/2018 - Nanda wrote: 96 Points
An amazing bottle of wine that shows the complexity and longevity of Rioja. Pop n pour to a kaleidoscopic nose of old leather, camp fire, incense with mature earthy red fruits. The palate has excellent richness and energy, and is deeply flavored echoing the nose. Should hold but why wait.
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6/17/2018 - Dave Canada wrote: 96 Points
Garnet colour
Nose is explosive....so fresh still...cedar, incense, flowers, tart red fruit, earth and mineral
Palate is pure, integrated and lively....cranberry, soy, tobacco, mineral, incense, leather, cedar and earth.
Finish is long....layered and complex.
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11/11/2017 - rayq wrote: 95 Points
Another great bottle of this wine. The 73 and 76 at VR are lovely wines.
This 73 was in really good condition and ran an outstanding 75 really close as wotd. Like the best Vina Real's this had a richness and opulence to it. Really distinguished wine.
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11/10/2017 - SimonG wrote: 95 Points
Mature Rioja @ Medlar (Medlar, London): When it's good, the 73 is very good and this bottle is no exception. Lovely and typically 73. All the leather, spice, orange peel and warm fireside. Opens and puts on a little coffee ground weight. Long and luscious. *****
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3/31/2017 - tinybubbles wrote: 88 Points
A relatively simple bottle with red fruit, light soil tones, but not much else. well short of other bottles
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11/20/2016 - DrZett Likes this wine: 95 Points
Had it at Decanter FWE Rioja Masterclass in London. What a great experience - coffee and tobacco dominate, some overripe red fruits and great overall aging flavours but still very approchable and a lot of fun.
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11/12/2016 - AV2012 wrote: 94 Points
Some coffee on the nose, broader and richer than '76 Imperial we had alongside. Very harmonic and at great point of time. Just loved it.
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11/11/2016 - Lype Likes this wine: 92 Points
Very fresh despite the age, good but not overwhelming acidity, red berries, leather, elegantly light and attractive.
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9/26/2016 - tinybubbles Likes this wine: 92 Points
Dried red fruit, soil tones, and pleasant funk on the nose. Better after two hours of air time, somewhat surprising given how this bottle started
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5/3/2016 - JulianSkeels Likes this wine: 95 Points
This was a real surprise - needed lots of air but eventually more than held its own against plenty of Rioja big-hitters from the 50s and 60s. Initially a metalic nose and blood taste, with air this developed a sweet toffee note and lovely salinity. Lively with fantastic freshness from salinity on finish. Kept on improving for 3hrs. Wonderful and really under the radar. Shows just how well this bottling improves with age. Highly recommended. Drink to 2040. 95+pts
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4/12/2016 - SimonG wrote: 92 Points
2016 Harwood-fest (Harwood Arms, London): Mid garnet. Mocha, coffee ground and orange peel nose with some faded fireside spice. Lovely harmonious mature Rioja palate. Complex and satisfying. A little muddy as the fine sediment starts to pour. A good but not great bottle of this. ****
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4/12/2016 - Rupert wrote:
Harwood Fest 2016 (Harwood Arms, Fulham, London): This was strikingly different from anything else here tonight - exotic, rich and sauce-like, lovely
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1/24/2016 - tinybubbles Likes this wine: 93 Points
Red and black cherry, black raspberry, funk on the nose, sweetness on the palate, with fresh ground coffee, moist earth, textural tinge of acid on the finish. Umami richness to the nose; they did remarkable things with tempranillo. A youthful bottle that still had an opportunity to take on additional complexity. No decant on this one but consumed intermittently over three hours. Consumed with miso glazed monkfish, spanish rice, and sauteed kale and garlic. 93+
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10/29/2015 - AHVinoFile wrote: 91 Points
[PWS' CVNE W Dinner at Bellota, Melbourne] Translucent medium deep garnet, orange edge. Mature bouquet of black & red cherry, black raspberry with black olive, licorice, leather, spice, truffles & smoke; later, some fig & date notes. Medium plus weight, moderately deep & intense though not very concentrated; traces of remnant tannins receding as some acidity starts to show through; mid palate fruit dries out with time in glass. Quite long tangy finish. Perhaps not as good a bottle as those reported elsewhere.
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8/7/2015 - BillBell73 wrote:
Purchased from the estate a few years back. Cork was in good shape and the juice, too, with only a little orange around the rim. Textbook 1973...very mellow and soft and more advanced than the 1966 vintage. This is my birth year wine, and I'm going to open one a year until they run out, but this seems to be on a slow decline given the paucity of fruit and the slightly hollow finish so it's probably time to drink up if you don't have that particular circumstance.
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12/21/2014 - ricknat1 Likes this wine: 95 Points
At ts peak with a long way t go. Bright red fruits, Rioja spices and long finish
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3/31/2014 - jaggeral1 wrote: 94 Points
Sensational, beautiful colour, vibrant and a wonderfully balanced palate. Seamless wine and a joy to drink.
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1/14/2014 - presterjohn wrote:
Delicate red fruit and a lot of vanilla. Nice but faded and past it
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1/10/2014 - Vinterest Angus Likes this wine: 94 Points
Fantastic wine for its age. Mirror previous comments of being bright and fresh on the attack, good acidity, medium body, with a long lingering finish. Superb.
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10/6/2013 - djinc01 wrote: 64 Points
Another disappointing 73... Bought online at auction & while this was in better shape than the California cab of the same vintage, it was well past it's prime. It's garnet color was appropriate but after tasting across the span of 7-8 hrs decanting, it never got beyond the port-like wine oxidation had made it become.
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4/22/2013 - Rupert wrote:
A fine spring lunch (The Glasshouse, Kew, London): Ripe, berried, smooth and round, everything resolved, rather lovely
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4/8/2013 - BradKNYC wrote: flawed
The glory of traditional old Rioja: C.V.N.E. Vina Real vertical 1944 - 1978. (Chris and Meredith's.): Corked.
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3/30/2013 - Burgundy Al wrote:
Another Saturday at Knightsbridge - mostly blind (Northbrook, IL): Blind tasting. Clearly an old, Old World wine made in a classic, acid-driven style. Lean, elegant and shroomy, with great earth aromas and flavors with impressive textures. Bit of tar and dried herb elements throughout. Slightly drying on end, I correctly identified as from 1973 (when given 3 choices) given some similarities to a recent bottle of 1973 Heredia.
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1/4/2013 - SimonG wrote: 95 Points
My 40th at The Ledbury (The Ledbury, London): Mid garnet to a browny orange at the rim. Gorgeous. Light, fragrant, almost ethereal quality to the nose with freshly cut orange peel, bergamot and light spices on the nose. Bright and fresh on the attack, good acidity and medium body, long and lingering finish. Just stunning. *****
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4/27/2012 - SimonG wrote: 95 Points
Dinner with R&Y and B&A (Home): Mid orange to light garnet, taking on colour and weight with air. That lovely sweet-fruited orange peel nose of old Rioja with a gentle scent of warm spices wafting through mediterranean air. Rounded, full, harmonious, complex and just down right lovely. Very complete - just what a mature wine should be. Nothing brash, just oozing charm and interest. Showing slightly better than previous bottle shared by JM@Contino. *****
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12/5/2011 - rayq wrote:
Having just enjoyed the Ygay 1964 this was going to have to be good and boy did it deliver.
Looking more its age than the Ygay with some fading at the rim.
The smoked and orange peel notes were there on the nose but it had a lovely fresh
mouthfeel. Old and graceful but still lively in the mouth. This had been double decanted in the
morning, I believe, but it continued to improve in the glass. Just like a bottle consumed at Contino
last year this continued to get better and was a pleasure to drink again.
Really classic old Rioja. (95+)
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11/26/2010 - SimonG wrote: 94 Points
Contino (Rioja): Mid brick-red to browning orange at the rim. Very scented orange rind on the nose. Good attack, very rounded and expansive on the mid-palate. Surprisingly long. lovely. **** We poured the remains from our glasses back in to the bottle, and did the same with the 81 Contini, taking them back to the hotel to finish off with dinner. After the 5 hour semi-double decant, this held up well and continued to improve to ****1/2+, overtaking the 81 Contino that started to fade a little and lose complexity. I'm pretty sure they don't make them like this anymore.
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9/14/2007 - RiojaGuru wrote: 92 Points
Not a great bottle (i.e. the 1970 Tondonia or 1981 Vina Real) but very nice with some resolved notes of classic Rioja, plus an odd resemblance to gewurz (close your eyes and taste).
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