1994 R. López de Heredia Rioja Gran Reserva Viña Tondonia

Community Tasting Notes (270) Avg Score: 92.7 points

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  2/9/2024 - Bubblesearcher23 wrote: flawed

  Purchased from a private cellar in storage facility. Good fill, one finger from cork. Under the wax seal, the cork is soaked through. Wine was overly brown and oxidized, tasted dull and bitter, this wine has collapsed. Bummed.

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  1/6/2024 - baroloboy55-2.0 Likes this wine: 94 Points

  Wine is in a truly excellent place. Decanted for about 4 hours. Poised. Complete. Complex. Cedary/leathery noise Extremely well balanced with a pronounced, substantial inner core of bright red fruit from the garnacha. Everything you want with a mature Lopez -- on a high plateau of maturity that should hold for quite some time. No rush to enjoy but no reason not to. Perfect wine for a dreary wet winter's night.

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  11/17/2023 - aChave Likes this wine: 94 Points

  Simply delicious. Deep, red color, though a nice clear tone. Very complex fruit with notes of leather and beautiful red fruit flavors. Oak is still present, but very fine grained and doesn’t detract at all. Long finish. This is in an excellent place, but will last for many years. A treat to enjoy now. Decanted for two hours, then consumed over an additional two hours. 94++

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  10/6/2023 - SimonG wrote: 94 Points

  A Medlar lunch (Medlar, London): Served single blind with the 94 Riserva. A little flatter and more subdued on the nose with a touch of vanilla. More precision and a bit more acidity here, more energy. Really quite vibrant. This continues the progression of this wine over the past decade, bottles every three years or so have been getting steadily better. ****1/2. Interesting to compare this and the 94 Reserva, blind. It was an easy pair to separate, the R having more fruit on the nose, but the GR more acidity, line and energy on the palate and a little more oak influence apparent on the nose.

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  7/23/2023 - Goldstone Likes this wine: 93 Points

  Totally saturated cork under wax cap but perfectly intact and easily extracted. Totally transparent and almost watery faded damask colour… looks much older than a 1994. Nose is immediately high lifted piano notes of bitter orange marmalade but mellows within 2 hours in the glass into soft, perfumed musk, dried spices and rich dried red plums fruit. Palate is sharp, tart bitter orange marmalade with high acidity and light but very dry tannins but which segue into a cranberry sharpness but with a counterpoint of rounded confit plum and less dry than earlier. Really multi-dimensional and contemplative on the long, resonant finale. Gorgeous. No rush if you have this in your cellar but is fully open for business.93+

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