2004 R. López de Heredia Rioja Reserva Viña Tondonia
Community Tasting Note
cristian_m wrote:
Thursday, October 20, 2016 - It pains me to write this note, and to be fair, an 87 is still a very good score. I've been a fan of Lopez Heredia for a long long time. That said, this wine really fails to deliver anything great from what should be one of the best vintages in recent memory. Contrary to what others have mentioned on this wine, I don't see a lot of upside inside these bottles that time will do anything for.
The wine has a pleasing appearance and a fair nose of sour cherry with some oak vanilla. Less expressive nose than I'm accustomed to with Tondonia and a lot less of the funk. The first sip is largely devoid of fruit and the rest of the taste progression doesn't uncover much either. Sour. Weight tends towards very watery and the wine has a jolting taste of chemical or almost like some flaws I've seen from fermentations that have gone too hot. No idea if that actually happened here but when I compare this Tondonia to the other Riojas I've had from 2004 , it makes me sad. I daresay I might not see much difference between this vintage and the 2002.
However, it is still pleasing, has pretty good length, flavors of leather, burnt earth and tree bark are all things I can get on board with. This is still a better than average wine.
I should add, I'm writing this note after having tried two bottles, two weeks apart and tasting one across 2 fulls days of breathing and the other across 3 days of air.
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Comment posted by Steve Brickley:
10/21/2016 10:57:00 PM - Thanks for the extensive notes. I mostly find LDH wines to be predictably good to wonderful, especially with extensive age. I also find, like you, that a particular year just doesn't do it for me. That's why I buy one to try first. So, I did that here and will see how it works out. I have a suspicion that we may largely agree. That's okay, plenty of other vintages and bottlings.