This is single-vineyard Rioja from the old-school cult producer above them all. The label may say crianza, but both the ageing and the wine’s maturity would easily qualify it as gran reserva. That is just one of many things about López de Heredia – Viña Tondonia that are unlike anyone else.
Viña Cubillo is made from grapes grown in the Cubillas vineyard, where all the vines, with an average age of around 50 years, are trained as bush vines. The grapes are Tempranillo (65%) and Garnacha (25%), while the remainder consists of Mazuelo and Graciano. The grapes are hand-harvested with great care in conical, shoulder-carried wooden containers (homemade, naturally), which protect the bunches from pressure so they arrive at the winery in perfect condition.
Vinification and ageing take place in casks from the estate’s own cooperage. Fermentation is carried out with native yeasts in approximately 130-year-old oak vats holding 24,000 litres, while the wine is aged for three years in old American oak barriques.
Filtration is not used – only old-fashioned fining with egg whites.
Viña Cubillo is an intense wine, but without excessive weight. This crianza does not reek of vanilla-flavoured boysenberry yogurt; this is a fine, slender and chiselled wonder with red and dark berry fruit, flanked by notes of coffee, vanilla and coconut from the oak. In addition, there are forest-floor-like ageing aromas in a wine with personality and edge, whose overall profile remains fresh and vibrant.
Enjoy it now or in a good handful of years; it ages beautifully.
93 points Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate
“The super bargain of the portfolio has to be the red 2017 Viña Cubillo Tinto Crianza, which this year shows more development and faster aging, with more tertiary notes than the other reds from 2013 and 2014 that I tasted next to it. The frost of April 2017 killed 100% of the vegetal mass at Cubillo, and the grapes they picked were exclusively from the second generation, therefore fruit that ripened in a much shorter cycle, as the harvest was also earlier. It has notes of damp earth, mushrooms, truffles and forest floor, dry leaves and decayed flowers and herbs. It has a polished palate and is medium-bodied, with mostly resolved tannins, and it feels a little lighter. But it’s still worth it. It was produced with a blend of 70% Tempranillo, 20% Garnacha and 5% each Graciano and Mazuelo from vines averaging 53 years of age.”
TWA, Luís Gutierrez, February 2025
