Post-Christmas Rioja Miracle

If you’ve been a wine lover for a long time, eventually your savvy friends catch on and mark you as a person for whom it’s easy to buy gifts.  While the Voyager doesn’t view himself as particularly materialistic, he is nonetheless gratified when his friends remember him during the holiday season by bestowing especially precious bottles. 

And so it was this Christmas that David Brenner (a/k/a Buck), who has been the Voyager’s dear friend for 54 years, sent along a bottle that merits a post of its own.  Rioja is one of the world’s greatest wine-growing regions; its great grape, Tempranillo, is one of the earth’s vinous treasures.  The laws that govern the Rioja Gran Reserva designation mandate that the wines spend several years in oak barrels, followed by several more years of aging in the bottle before release.  The end result for these traditional wines is something so smooth and graceful that it truly defies description.  The bottle Buck sent this year is a sterling example of these extraordinarily harmonious wines…

Liquid silk -- magnificent

 2001 Faustino I Gran Reserva Rioja (Rioja, SPAIN):  Medium garnet, with some maturity on the rim – but the color is still rather youthful.  Trademark Rioja aromas of leather, violets, cherries and the scent of vanilla that comes from extended aging in oaken casks – integrated by further years of bottle age.  An element of iodine entered as the wine aired.  There comes a point, however, where the individual characteristics that make up the bouquet and taste of a wine become so knit together that the end result is much more than the sum of the parts – and this is very much the case with the 2001 Faustino I.  The nose is ethereal, and the palate is sheer red silk.  Certain wines are touchstones; time machines, really, that take you back to the things you first loved about wine.  This bottle reminds me of the 1970 Gran Reserva from Bodegas Olarra, one of the wines that made me fall in love with Rioja when I first started to taste excellent vintages.  This is seamless, classic, and utterly unforgettable.  *****

 (Note: five stars are reserved for wines of such evanescent qualities that they stand in a class by themselves.  This is the first five-star rating given by the Voyager.  Thanks, Buck, for a superb experience!  Especially welcome since the Voyager's beloved fiancé, Vyna, went home to Singapore this morning; an exceptional Rioja mitigates the loss just a bit.)