1973 C.V.N.E. (Compañía Vinícola del Norte de España) Rioja Viña Real Gran Reserva

Community Tasting Notes (33) Avg Score: 92.6 points

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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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