This wine spends six years in barrique (tradtionally it needed six winters to stabilize naturally), before racking into large casks and then bottling three years before the expected release. Attractive, dark earth and dried sage with a strong aroma of attractive, rich dried cherries, as well as blackberries and hints of cedar, cigar tobacco and fresh leather. The palate has a smooth array of fine but quite powerful tannin that builds seamlessly into the long, rich, dark cherry-flavored finish. Great wine! Drink or hold.

Limpid red. An intensely perfumed bouquet evokes raspberry, cherry cola, potpourri and exotic spices, with a vanilla topnote and a smoky mineral flourish. Sweet and focused in the mouth, offering sappy red fruit, spicecake, mocha and rose pastille flavors that flesh out on the back half. Finishes very long and spicy, with a resonating floral note, well-knit tannins and a touch of medicinal herbs. (JR)

Viña Tondonia is a collection of parcels centered on a rise above the Ebro River, where it forms a wide loop outside of Haro. The López de Heredia family farms these parcels as bush vines, blending their fruit into long-lived, vineyard-designated wines. This vintage, including 70 percent tempranillo and 20 percent garnacha with a little graciano and mazuelo, is a lovely, elegant Rioja in a classical mode. There is something magical about well-aged Rioja, and there is often something magical about Viña Tondonia, suggested by this wine’s gentle, lasting touch of bright, sunny cherry notes and deep earth tones, the flavors delicately saturated. Get some.