{"title":"Rebel Rioja 9.17.26","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"e15","title":"Bodegas Roda Reserva","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIf Rioja is a story told in layers — stone and sun, wind and wood, heritage and revision — then RODA has long been one of its more eloquent narrators. Their wines don’t shout; they gently unfurl.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe 2021 vintage comes from a season that felt almost restorative to Rioja Alta — a return to temperance, balance, and the gentle rhythms that once defined the region before modern extremes began redrawing them. Spring brought timely rains; summer moved with measured warmth; nights cooled enough to lend freshness and nerve to Tempranillo’s dark, slow-growing fruit. This balance is evident in the glass.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFrom the first swirl, the 2021 Reserva seems to reveal a play in chiaroscuro — intense contrasts of shadow and light that has become something of a RODA signature. There are aromas of black cherry and wild plum, dried rose petals pressed in the pages of an old book, plentiful cedar shavings, and the mineral hush of river stones drying in the sun. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eOn the palate, Tempranillo is supple but structured, cool-fruited yet deep in tone — while a small proportion of Graciano adds the tangy herbal lift that keeps the wine vibrant. French oak lends grain and dimension. The tannins are finely woven and gently textured. What lingers is not weight but resonance — a savory, lightly spiced echo that feels carried on an evening breeze down the Ebro corridor.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWhat I find so compelling about RODA Reserva 2021 is its scrumptious immediacy. There is an ease to its balance, a clarity to its fruit, a kind of poised generosity that makes it delightful now—no doubt. But you could also give it time — five, 10, even 15 years — and the wine will reveal new strata of earth, spice, and deep-toned fruit.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePerhaps this is the paradox RODA has mastered: wines that honor tradition without calcifying into it, that embrace modern precision without losing the warm human touch. The 2021 Reserva feels distinctly Rioja Alta, but also distinctly RODA — shaped by place, yes, but equally by the hands that prune the vines, the taste that selects the barrels, and the quiet philosophy that lets elegant wine speak for itself.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePairing Suggestions — A Table Inspired by Rioja:\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThink of dishes that echo the wine’s interplay of savor and brightness: wood-fired lamb chops with rosemary and sea salt; roasted piquillo peppers stuffed with minced mushrooms; grilled tuna with olive oil and garlic; a plate of aged Manchego or Ossau-Iraty whose nutty firmness meets the wine’s focused fruit. Even a simple tortilla Española, golden and tender, will feel elevated beside the Reserva’s graceful depth.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Select Sellars","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45380671504617,"sku":"401403","price":59.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0579\/2805\/7022\/products\/image_b25646a6-efa9-413e-aff8-0a5800b3c138.png?v=1631718421"},{"product_id":"e19","title":"Lopez de Heredia Vina Tondonia Reserva Red","description":"\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003eA Quiet Conversation With The Dead — And The Greatest Rioja I've Tasted In Years\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003eMaría José López de Heredia runs one of Spain's most revered wine estates. She is the fourth generation of her family to do so, and she has a habit that I find, depending on your disposition, either slightly \u003cem\u003elouche\u003c\/em\u003e or deeply moving.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003eShe talks to her ancestors every day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003eNot metaphorically. Not in the abstract sense that all great winemakers honor their predecessors. Literally — a quiet daily conversation with her great-grandfather Don Rafael, her grandfather, her father — the three generations of López de Heredias who built, brick by barrel by bottle, one of the most extraordinary wine estates in the world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\"I do speak to them every day,\" she told \u003cem\u003eWine Spectator,\u003c\/em\u003e with the casual certainty of someone for whom this requires no further explanation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003eHaving tasted the 2012 Viña Tondonia Reserva, I understand completely. These are wines that make you believe the dead are still present.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003eDon Rafael López de Heredia y Landeta founded the bodega in 1877 in the town of Haro, in Rioja Alta — one of the first three bodegas in the entire Rioja region, established when phylloxera was destroying French vineyards and the world's wine trade was being remade from scratch. Don Rafael fell in love with the combination of limestone soils, Atlantic climate and the great sweeping bend of the Ebro River, and he built something that has, in the nearly 150 years since, changed almost not at all.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003eThe cellars are carved 200 meters into natural sandstone, ten meters deep, housing 12,900 barrels at any given time. The family operates its own cooperage — their coopers repair and maintain barrels in-house, sourcing new wood from the Appalachian Mountains of America and aging it for two years in Spain before it ever touches wine. The wines ferment with indigenous yeasts. Malolactic fermentation happens spontaneously. And the wines age in those old American oak barrels — six years for the Reserva, a decade or more for the Gran Reservas — until the family, and only the family, decides they are ready.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003eWhich is why, while the rest of Rioja is releasing their 2022s and 2023s, López de Heredia is only now sharing their 2012 Reserva with the world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003eThis is not stubbornness. This is not \u003cem\u003efustian\u003c\/em\u003e traditionalism for its own sake. This is a family that has spent nearly 150 years understanding something the modern wine trade has largely forgotten: that great wine is not finished when fermentation stops. It is barely begun. And patience — genuine, unhurried, generational patience — is not a marketing strategy. It is simply how these wines have always been made.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003eThe Viña Tondonia vineyard itself is one of Spain's most beautiful pieces of agricultural land — a sweeping, shell-shaped depression on the right bank of the Ebro, planted in alluvial clay over limestone, cooled by Atlantic breezes that allow Tempranillo, Garnacha, Graciano and Mazuelo to ripen slowly, building complexity without surrendering acidity. The vines' roots reach thirty meters into the earth in search of water and minerals. You can taste those thirty meters in the glass.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003eThe 2012 Reserva unfolds slowly — and I mean that as the highest compliment. It opens quietly, like an old library door, and what lies beyond is dried cherries, wild strawberries, orange peel, cedar, tobacco leaf, leather, dried rose petals, black tea, forest floor and a delicate balsamic spice that has no modern equivalent in wine. The palate is \u003cem\u003epellucid\u003c\/em\u003e and silky — bright red fruits still vibrant after a decade, carried by fresh acidity and tannins so fine they are felt rather than tasted, fading into a finish of dried herbs, mineral earth and the ghost of American oak so thoroughly integrated it has become part of the wine's identity rather than an imposition upon it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003eThis is Rioja as it existed before richness and extraction became virtues. A wine of nuance, restraint and effortless complexity — it inspires and rewards your careful attention.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003eOutside the ancient bodega in Haro, there is a pavilion designed by Zaha Hadid — the late, great architect of swooping, futurist curves — commissioned for the winery's 125th anniversary. It is, by every measure, one of the most beautiful small buildings in Spain. And it sits in magnificent, \u003cem\u003eraffish\u003c\/em\u003e incongruity next to one of the most unchanged wine operations on earth, as if to say: we know exactly what we are, and we are comfortable enough in that knowledge to find it amusing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003eI find it rather wonderful.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003ePour this with roast lamb, grilled mushrooms, duck breast, Jamón Ibérico or aged Manchego. Or simply open it on a quiet evening and let María José's daily conversation with her ancestors wash over you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp class=\"font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal\" dir=\"ltr\"\u003eThe 2012 is drinking beautifully now and will continue to evolve gracefully for another two decades. There is no urgency. There never is, with López de Heredia.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Vino Veritas","offers":[{"title":"750 ml","offer_id":44449157316841,"sku":"","price":69.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"375ml","offer_id":47905278460137,"sku":"","price":37.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"1.5 L","offer_id":46505795518697,"sku":"","price":199.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0579\/2805\/7022\/products\/image_8854a70b-2171-412b-86b3-0967bd909765.png?v=1631719016"},{"product_id":"e23","title":"Bhilar Phincas Rioja","description":"","brand":"Select Sellars","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44848436904169,"sku":"430005","price":29.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0579\/2805\/7022\/products\/image_1032b10c-ecdb-4737-a0fe-772c9dc12429.png?v=1631719063"},{"product_id":"la-rioja-alta-vina-alberdi","title":"La Rioja Alta Vina Alberdi Seleccion Especial Reserva 2021","description":"","brand":"Winebow","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43521468399849,"sku":"30343231","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0579\/2805\/7022\/files\/IMG-3922.png?v=1788205886"},{"product_id":"conde-de-hervias-trinidad","title":"Conde de Hervias Trinidad","description":"","brand":"Vino Veritas","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44329942614249,"sku":"413C","price":32.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}]},{"product_id":"piratas-del-ebro-chatxo-rioja-alavesa","title":"Piratas del Ebro Chatxo Rioja Alavesa","description":"","brand":"Left Bank","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47343565471977,"sku":"S26630","price":16.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}]}],"url":"https:\/\/waterfordwine.com\/collections\/rebel-rioja-9-17-26.oembed","provider":"Waterford Wine and Spirits","version":"1.0","type":"link"}