Conde de Hervías Rioja

Opaque ruby. Explosively perfumed nose offers a sexy bouquet of red and dark berries, Asian spices, candied licorice, black cardamom and yellow rose. Mouthfilling red fruit flavors are wrapped in supple tannins, with vibrant minerality adding lift. Impressively fresh and focused for such flavor impact, finishing with superb mouthcoating persistence. Primal but delicious already.

This is the first release of Conde de Hervias. Many of the vines are pre-phylloxera planted on sandy soil (hence their survival) in the town of Torremontalvo. The wine was aged in French and American oak for 16 months. The reticent nose offers up cedar, mineral, spice box, incense, and black cherry. Elegant on the palate, structured, and nicely concentrated, the flavors offer considerable complexity, no doubt from the old vines, with the promise of more to come for those who give it another 6–8 years of cellaring. This fine effort will be at its best from now to 2020.