Cosme Palacio ‘Vinedos en Altitud’ Rioja 2017

A fantastic Rioja with a touch of bling about it. Roberto Rodriguez calls this a ‘super-Crianza’, because he shepherds it from vineyard to bottle as if it were a Reserva, hand-picking the most flavour-intensive berries from high altitude vineyards, lavishing upon them the finest, new French oak barrels that money can buy and treating the wine to a long élevage. So, what we have here is a sumptuously concentrated, yet paradoxically fresh and vibrant Rioja that has a modern gloss and sheen to the palate thanks to its core of juicy cassis fruit, but it also displays the most perfectly-pitched high tones from the oak, adding notes of vanilla, kola and Indian ink. It’s not an ‘oaky’ wine, which I always take to mean a wine where the oak is more dominant than the fruit. No, the flavours and aromas are dominated by the fabulously ripe and mouth-watering Tempranillo, the oak influence is predominantly textural and the toothsome flavours that it does impart are subtle and harmonious. Fear not, it doesn’t taste like someone emptied a bag of cloves into the tank. I drank it over 4 nights and it didn’t lose an ounce of freshness or fruit purity, so it should age beautifully for a decade or so, but it’s unbelievably delicious right now, so no need to wait. 14% alc. Drink now-2028.