New wines on Friday! Natural, of course…

Viña Bosconia Red Reserva 2001
Rioja, Spain

mostly Tempranillo, with smaller amounts of Garnacho (Grenache), Mazuelo, and Graciano

by López de Heredia
(one of our favorite wineries)

So much Tempranillo — the noble red grape of Rioja in Spain — comes to our country today vinified in an ultra modern style. There’s nothing wrong with that and there are a lot of great Rioja bottlings available on the market today.

But when you taste López de Heredia’s wines for the first time, you realize that while those other wines may have taken you to Spain with their flavors and aromas, these wines transport you to the Upper Ebro Valley in Rioja, with its mild temperatures and weather and its vineyards, situated at 300 meters above sea level. When you taste these wines you taste a wine — there’s no doubt about it — that could only be made in that place, using the native grape varieties of that place, and by the people who live in and belong to that place. López de Heredia’s wines have an ineffable, je ne sais quoi lightness that magically draws out their gentle tannins and earthy aromas. We just can’t tell you enough just how much we love them (we drank them at our wedding last September!).

Check out the skinny on the Viña Bosconia Reserva 2001 by López de Heredia ($72) and check out the really cool section on the winery’s cooperage: LdH is the only winery in Rioja that makes its own barrels (the pages on barrel-making and barrel-aging are fascinating and highly informative).

Tomorrow will post about the LdH rosé! Stay tuned…

And don’t forget to sign up for the first-ever San Diego Natural Wine Summit at Jaynes, August 9, 2009!