Rioja 2001- Hacienda Lopez de Haro

🚨 Value Alert! This 20 year old Rioja from Hacienda Lopez de Haro is drinking so sweetly today and at £28 – it’s bargain city! No wonder that monk looks so happy.
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🛫 Ain’t it funny how time flies? Whenever I see an early 2000s label it doesn’t make sense in my brain that the wine is TWENTY years old! Nothing registers as mature in mind much before 1990 and yes, that’s because I am so blooming old!
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🍇 It’s amazing to think this wine has been maturing for twenty years and is available to us for just £28, it’s also singing at the moment with fruit and tertiary characteristics on the nose and palate – this is a seriously scrumptious Tempranillo from a corking (10/10 decanter) vintage!
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✏ Slight tinge of orange on the rim but looks super youthful. The nose is ultra-pronounced and fresh, full of spice and warmth with cocoa, coffee, bramble fruits, fig and clove. Plenty of fruit on the silky attack, integrated tannins, midpalate flavours edge towards fig/damson and the finish is flavoursome and persistent. Balanced, moreish and under priced. 93 points.
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🤔What year crosses into ‘older’ vintages in your mind?