1976 R. Lopéz de Heredia Viña Tondonia Rioja Gran Reserva

 The 1976 Viña Tondonia Rioja Gran Reserva is a wine of great clarity and finesse, with a very long, ethereal finish featuring fully resolved tannins and an impression of weightlessness.

Medium red, with a browning edge. A crumbling cork set off alarm bells but one whiff of this elixir and my fears dissipated. Multifaceted perfume of cherry, strawberry, plum, dried rose, black olive, pepper and celery seed, along with balsamic and leather nuances and a touch of incipient maderization. Wonderfully silky on entry, but with strong integrated acidity giving the mid-palate an almost electric impression of vinosity. Still presents some very fresh strawberry and raspberry fruit after 39 years, along with the deeper, more decadent notes of smoky underbrush, leather and coffee grounds. A wine of great clarity and finesse, with a very long, ethereal finish featuring fully resolved tannins and an impression of weightlessness. At or just past its peak, this is a wine of outstanding energy and class. It would make an amazing partner to suckling lamb.

Great gran reservas, made by the most traditional Rioja producers in only the best years (Lopéz de Heredia was founded in 1877), spend years in barrel and bodega prior to being released.  While in theory they are then ready to drink, the best of these wines can continue to age magnificently in a cold cellar, gaining in texture and depth and taking on tertiary aromas while somehow maintaining their treble notes of red fruits and dried flowers. I first tasted this Rioja in the damp, spooky, cobwebbed cellar of Lopéz de Heredia in 1993, and this bottle, opened this past weekend, seemed barely a few years older.

The Viña Tondonia comes from Lopéz de Heredia’s most famous vineyard, planted along the Ebro river on alluvial clay soil with a high limestone content. While this bodega’s Viña Bosconia Gran Reserva is generally thicker and sweeter (it comes in a Burgundy-shaped bottle) and the Tondonia more claret-like (done in a Bordeaux bottle), I’ve always found the ‘76 Tondonia fresher and richer than its sibling. 94/Drink Now.

-- Stephen Tanzer