Rioja

Rioja does something no other region does at scale: it holds the wine back. A Gran Reserva must spend at least two years in oak and three more in bottle before it can be sold, and the traditional houses go well beyond that minimum, releasing wines at eight, ten, sometimes fifteen years old. López de Heredia, La Rioja Alta, CVNE and Marqués de Murrieta have been working this way, without much interruption, since the nineteenth century.

Two things follow, and both are useful. Old vintages are more available here than almost anywhere else, because the wine was never rushed out and the cellars still hold library stock. And they are inexpensive by the standards of old wine: a Gran Reserva from 1964 or 1970 can cost less than a young Pauillac. Tempranillo, aged long in American oak, goes soft and savoury, with dill, dried strawberry and old leather.

Late release also means better provenance. A bottle labelled 1970 may not have left the bodega until the middle of the 1980s, and until then it lay in the dark at a steady temperature, in the place where it was made. That is a large part of why old Rioja reaches us in better condition than old wine from regions where everything was sold the moment it was ready.

The reliable years include 1964, 1968, 1970, 1978, 1981, 1982, 1994 and 2001, but Rioja is unusually forgiving, and even the middling harvests produced wines that have lasted. We check each bottle's condition by hand before it ships. It arrives packed and tracked.