This is very fine and polished after a decade since its release onto the market. It's medium-bodied with ultra-fine tannins with a racy and silky texture. Energetic acidity gives it tension and brightness. Still a little tight considering its age.

The 2001 Viña Tondonia Rioja “Reserva” from López de Heredia is a truly beautiful wine in the making. At age eighteen, it is drinking with a great degree of style and polish, but is still in climbing mode and will be even better down the road than it is today! The gorgeous bouquet wafts from the glass in a mix of cherries, raspberries, toasted coconut, cloves, salty soil elements, cigar wrapper, cinnamon and orange zest in the upper register. On the palate the wine is pure, full-bodied, refined and nicely tangy, with a lovely core of fruit, great soil signature, moderate, buried tannins and stunning length and grip on the vibrant and very complex finish. This is not a powerful wine by any stretch of the imagination, but rather a vibrant, intensely flavored and beautifully transparent wine of breed and stellar complexity. 2001 is a great vintage in Rioja and the Viña Tondonia “Reserva” has fully captured all of the potential of this magical year. It is delicious now and is only going to get better for the next couple of decades.

Elegance and understatement are the classic hallmarks of fine Rioja, sustained in this estate-grown red from an exceptional vintage. The wine’s complexity begins in the light cranberry essence of its aroma, which deepens to cherries and adds zesty notes of orange peel as the flavors build in richness. Sleek and mature, this is the ultimate red for rack of lamb.