2006 - 2011 Remelluri Reserva

Remelluri Owned by the family of Telmo Rodriguez, and since the retirement of Jaime Rodriguez in 2010, run on behalf of the family by Telmo and his sister Amaia. This property released the first genuine estate wines of la Rioja: owned, grown, made and bottled on a single property. Organic and never subjected to herbicide, Remelluri is in conversion to biodynamics, and increasingly planted to field blends of its own genetic cultivars. If la Rioja is one of wine’s most beautiful places, equally Remelluri is Rioja at its most beautiful. 

 Today’s Remelluri Reservas are consistent with those of the past: refined, elegant, and not much marked by racking - all oak influence is clean and meaningful. However, since Telmo’s return it’s a noticeably brighter, marginally richer, fabulously brambly red berry wine with wonderful florals. Tempranillo predominantly, with a little Graciano and Garnacha, plus field blend Viura and ‘Malvasia’. Fermentation is in large conical oak vats, with pigeage. Malo is mainly in vats, with a portion in barrique. New oak ageing is reserved for the most structured fruit; most gains secondary character from ‘oxidative’ ageing in older wood. After about 17 months ageing, it’s bottled unfiltered. REMELLURI Estate This is a ground-breaker – a quantum shift in Remelluri. Lovely framing tannin is filled with purply mountain herbs and carries hints of pepper, toasted lavender, sage, thyme. Fluidity inheres in and around a camshaft of tannin which quite literally gears the wine. Compelling! Bright briary-herbal fruits and cedary balsam are impregnably knit, sandwiched on the nose with mountain air above and chocolate-earth below. In the mouth, it shows wonderful poise – fresh mountain-blue-florals lead to a fruit-spice-oak build by mid-palate, fading to a long, gentle, slightly earthen release. Never big and always graceful, with years of positive development ahead.