A Spanish classic
It is one of the great Rioja Gran Reservas. It is only made in the best vintages, and it cellars extraordinarily well. It is named after the format in which it was originally sold to the English market, the Imperial pint. It was the first ever Spanish wine to be named the World’s Best by the Wine Spectator; that was for the 2004 vintage, harvested under similar vintage conditions to the newly-released 2016. It is CVNE’s Imperial Gran Reserva.
CVNE is short for Compañía Vinicola del Norte de España (The Northern Spanish Wine Company), but it has been affectionately known by generations of Spaniards as ‘Cooney’. It was founded at the peak
of the Rioja boom in 1879 by two brothers, and remains family-owned and run to this day.
2016 saw a blessedly good vintage here, with a dry, long, warm season. As ever, CVNE chose their best-performing plots to make Imperial; this year, it is a blend of fruit from some high, bare sites in the lee of the Sierra de Toloño, and a plot of old bushvines that grows through the pebbley soil of an old riverbed. It was raised in a mix of French and American oak. The wine is powerful and closed, fresh and elegant. It still seems very young, but the tannins are very fine and well-wound. The cherry, cigar, and chocolate bouquet is only going to get more complex with time. /NT
'The classical 2016 Imperial Gran Reserva was produced with a blend of 85% Tempranillo, 10% Graciano and 5% Mazuelo from grapes that were picked between October 10 and 25 with good ripeness, delivering a wine with 14.5% alcohol after fermenting in small oak vats followed by malolactic in concrete and two years in barrel and three in bottle. I was quite surprised, because the wine was quite closed and needed energetic swirling and time in the glass to reveal its true colors. It has more stuffing and finesse than the reserva. 2016 was a very good vintage, with freshness and balance to develop nicely in bottle. The tannins are very fine, and the wine is tasty and long. 50,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in July 2019.' 95 points, Luis Gutierrez, robertparker.com, Jul 2022
Offered subject to remaining unsold; available Spring 2023
