Rafael Lopez de Heredia, Vina Tondonia Gran Reserva 2012

98 points - Robert Parker's The Wine Advocate '... This is 70% Tempranillo, 20% Garnacho and 5% each Graciano and Mazuelo that fermented in their 153-year-old oak vats with indigenous yeasts and matured in used barrels for 10 years. It has 13% alcohol, a pH of 3.4 and 6.4 grams of acidity (tartaric). The nose shows young (tasting it blind, you'd guess a 10-year old wine, not a 20-year-old wine!). It has a nose of sweet spices, underbrush and cigar ash, somewhat balsamic, bramble fruit with perfect ripeness, integrated and young but starting to show some tertiary complexity. The palate is velvety and medium-bodied, with fine-grained, chalky tannins denoting a limestone soil that brings finesse and texture and a sapid, tasty, almost salty finish. This is going to make a beautiful bottle of old Rioja in 30 years' time! 25,000 bottles produced. It was bottled after being fined with egg whites in July 2012. The Gran Reserva wines from López de Heredia come back to the market with the heralded 2001 vintage. Otherwise, when I asked them about news, the answer was "We continue making Viña Tondonia as we have always done." Basically, they are against change... From their 170 hectares of vineyards, 124 are currently in production, from which they produce around 400,000 bottles. They are the most traditional among Rioja traditionalists'.