Rioja Gran Reserva, 'Viña Arana'

Score

96

Score

96

Score

91

Score

96

Score

95

Score

92

Score

95

"Beautiful transparency here with fresh flowers, green tobacco, pine needles, crushed stones and sandalwood. Dark fruits in the center. Full-bodied with a wonderful balance of fruit and fine tannins as well as mineral, fresh bark and delicate purple fruit. Subtlety with energy. Youthful now and drinkable, but even better in 2026."

Score

17.5+

"Mature notes of coffee and black chocolate layer over the very savoury dark fruit; yet there is also tons of freshness, and the tannins are very elegantly integrated. The perfumed finish goes on forever. (FG)"

Score

93

"The 2016 Viña Arana Gran Reserva from La Rioja Alta is a ripe wine, tipping the scales at 14.5 percent octane in this vintage, but also beautifully balanced. It is composed from a blend of ninety-five percent tempranillo and five percent graciano, with the wine raised for three years in used American oak barrels, with the average age of each cask three years of age at the outset. The bouquet is outstanding, offering up scents of black raspberries, cassis, cigar ash, cloves, fresh nutmeg, woodsmoke, a lovely base of soil, nutskin and coconutty American oak. On the palate the wine is pure, focused and full-bodied, with lovely depth of fruit, fine soil inflection, ripe, buried tannins and a long, tangy, complex and impeccably balanced finish. This is a lovely bottle of old school Rioja that is already drinking quite nicely at age eight, but it has a fine structural chassis and decades and decades of life ahead of it. 2024-2075."

Score

93

"The 2016 Viña Arana Gran Reserva is an elegant blend of Tempranillo with 5% Graciano matured in used American oak barrels for three years. During this time, the wine was manually racked from barrel to barrel, with the help of a candle, six times. It's ripe at 14.5% alcohol, with pungent notes of forest floor and truffles, dark spices and an earthy touch. It has a powerful palate, with very good freshness and acidity, reflecting the cooler year. It has some tannins that would welcome food. 60,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in July 2021."