Wine cannot overcome all troubles.
More often than not wine modifies our mood for the positive. Sometimes it doesn’t. It is not the wine to blame, there are bad headspaces that cannot be resolved with even the best wines.
I have not been myself over the last few days. Maybe it is work, maybe it is the lack of travel with the lockdown, who knows these things. Bad moods build like storms. I have been prickly, over sensitive. Small things agitate, every jest becomes an insult to be taken personally. Terrible company.
Shell is a prankster and a torment. She derives pleasure from teasing me mercilessly. I love her for it, it usually brings me immense joy that my seriousness is a game for her. In a bad mood, it grates. I lash out in anger, we mend and move on. Not today. Today I hang onto the anger, can’t let it go.
Finally, we agree to open a bottle, and then another. It helps, but my mood still simmers.
As I type this the next day and read the notes I consider, these were both fantastic wines, just how great would have they been if I was in a better company?
Wine 1.
Decanted for 30 minutes.
100% Tempranillo from 30-year-old vines.
Medium ruby to garnet with a pale ruby rim. The nose is dominated by intense cherry fruit. There is oak present, sweet spices of cinnamon and vanilla. I can’t determine if it is French or American. Underpinning the cherry and oak is tobacco, cedar and violets making for an impressive, complex nose. On the palate, it is all texture. Both fruit and oak deliver a velvet mouthfeel. Cherries again, with vanilla, cinnamon and white pepper. Medium acid and medium tannins deliver a balanced, decadent wine.
One of the better Rioja’s I have tasted. I am wondering what the Grand Reserva might deliver.
Drink now – 2030.
92 pts.
