2001 Lopez de Heredia Vina Tondonia Rioja Reserva

2001 Lopez de Heredia Vina Tondonia Rioja Reserva

By Codey Foster

I probably don’t need to tell you that 2001 is one of the best vintages Rioja has ever seen. And I probably don’t need to tell you that Lopez de Heredia is one of the greatest bang for your buck producers in the whole world—I’ve raved about this vintage and this producer before—but I will tell you that if you haven’t caught the Rioja bug, this is your one-way ticket to Tempranillo nirvana.

All said and done, this wine stacks up, and maybe even surpasses some of my favorite 2001 Riojas. It is the epitome of traditional production and it’s one of those wines that might live forever.

Typically these kinds of wine reviews are pretty predictable. I give some kind of general commentary that pertains to the wine being reviewed, then I go into the whole appearance, nose, flavor profile, structure, and pairing spiel. This time I’m going to break the mold a little. Mostly because I think this wine is perfect—perfect in the sense that it tastes just as a Reserva Rioja should. And because of this, I don’t see value in me describing its flavor profile as much as I see value in going out and tasting it and developing your own interpretation. However, I can’t resist comparing it to the 2001 Vina Ardanza Reserva Especial, a wine that I have also described as textbook despite its tendency to be a completely different animal.

First of all, to understand the big picture I think it’s important to stipulate that both of these producers make an insane amount of wine—Lopez, mostly from their own vineyards, and La Rioja Alta (the producer of Ardanza), mostly not from their own vineyards. I’ve even been told that La Rioja Alta wouldn’t hesitate to purchase tanker trucks of finished wine from other growers and dump them in with the wines that they’ve produced at their own estate—however, as an indulgent consumer, sometimes I feel that where the wine comes from, or through which pipelines it oozes matters very little in the grand scheme of things because it gives me so much pleasure.

That said, the pleasures that these two wines give me are different and hard to characterize, but incredibly evident on the palate. At first glance the Vina Ardanza is a richer wine, more supple, more fruit-driven, and bold. The Lopez in contrast is more developed, secondary aroma-driven, lean, and austere. And while both of these wines have developed, and will continue to develop secondary aromas—the Ardanza is more focused on secondary fruit aromas while the Lopez is a little more about earth, funk, and well-manifested oak.

 Truth be told, both of these wines are spectacularly oaky—a term that has learned to insight fear in American consumer, but in this case it is the oak that frames the wines and without it, I wouldn’t love them so much. In the Ardanza, it is an element embedded in its very fruit structure—an element that almost seems to have existed in the juice ever since it was contained by the vine. In the Lopez it is not so much a natural quality as it is a spicy, surreal element that provides a reference point at which all of the wine’s complexity can be measured.

And despite these vivid nuances, I must stress that these wines are still very similar in spirit and that is how I justify them both being textbook examples of traditional Rioja. It’s amazing to me how two different bottlings from the same region and of the same tradition can be so similar in execution but so different in outcome. It’s not something I entirely understand and I understand terroir, but I think land is only a small piece to the puzzle, as is any other element that makes a wine what it is. More likely, I think it’s a combination of so many different components from vine to glass that set these both elegant and perplexing wines apart from each other. All said and done the outcomes are nothing but impressive.

To further evidence the longevity of the Lopez wines—just last week I brought my tasting group a Lopez de Heredia 1991 Vina Bosconia Grand Reserva. I had the wine in a brown paper bag, and the group insisted on tasting it blind. The ultimate consensus: Spanish, Rioja, mostly Tempranillo, but from 2001 or 2004? I can only help that the 2001 Reserva ages just as gracefully.

We’ve got the 750 ml for $36.99 and the magnums are due to arrive any day now.