Community Tasting Note
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Omar Khayyam wrote: 82 points
March 3, 2018 - It starts out quite charming, with classic Rioja oak on the nose, but also fruit (sloe berries), but on the palate it's more about drying fruit, old wooden barrels, spicy bitterness, astringent finish.
It's not bad, but also not the bargain steal that it is sometimes made out to be here in Sweden [edit: including by me previously, in a note from 2013 concerning the 1998 vintage!]. Clearly, this is one of the better vintages, and it has a lot of varietal or regional typicality, while still not achieving the full aim of being interesting. On the other hand, this is close to competing with a Bordeaux a more than twice the price that I tried the other day so it's not necessarily the wrong choice for an everyday wine, with some grilled meats. It's just not very interesting.
[edit: thx Lilja for pointing out that this wine is also to be found in the UK, as opposed to only in Sweden. I tried finding a trace of this wine on the producer's homepage but could not, so my conclusion is that this is a cheaper product that they concoct for some export markets and domestically don't want to interfere with the main brand]1,536 views
3 Comments
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Lilja commented:
3/4/18, 12:23 AM - http://www.oddbins.com/lat-42-rioja-reserva
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Omar Khayyam commented:
3/4/18, 3:36 AM - bra där! I will edit the note to account for the fact that this wine is also found in the UK
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Lilja commented:
3/4/18, 7:09 AM - The Torre de Oña winery seem to be owned by La Rioja Alta. So my guess (as you bring up earlier as well) is that they do special brands and bottlings for different markets. Also just now realized that the Oddbin listing wasn't the Gran Reserva, but only the Reserva. So you might have been right from the go, haven't seen the Gran Reserva anywhere else than on the Swedish market.