94 |
OwenBargreen.com |
The stunning 2015 ‘Gran Reserva’ was stored for 24 months in French and American oak barrels and then a further 36 months in barrel before bottling. This has fantastic concentration and underlying finesse. Ripe dark raspberry flavors mingle well with fresh pipe tobacco, black tea, and blackberry cobbler flavors. Finishing long with copious minerals, enjoy this beautiful wine now and over the next ten plus years. Drink 2023-2035- Owen Bargreen - October, 2023 |
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93 |
Wine Review Online |
I’ve let my press sample of this wine settle for a few months before pulling the cork, and perhaps that’s why my review differs from a few others that I happen to have read. I like the wine better, but for different reasons. To my taste, at least on the night when I caught it, this is admirably elegant and complex for a 2015 Gran Reserva at this point in its developmental trajectory, with lovely aromatic notes that are at least as much fruit-driven as wood-derived. That is a clear virtue in my estimation — though I’m perfectly prepared to age Rioja Gran Reservas for 15 or 20 years — for the simple reason that only a tiny percentage of world-wide consumers have either the cellar or the patience to do that. From a notably hot and dry year, this is fresh and lithe, with excellent balance of fruit (red-toned, mostly) to fresh acidity, spicy oak and tannin. Sure, it will be much more complex and interesting a decade from now, and if you do indeed have a cellar and sufficient patience to provide that much time (or more) for this to blossom fully, that’s exactly what I recommend. But the fact is that this is delicious already, and in its Burgundian style (no more weight, just as much acidity and better managed tannins), this is ready to enjoy right now, and with poultry or veal or pork or duck — not just a steak.
Michael Franz – September 26, 2023 |
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92 |
Wine & Spirits Magazine |
Rioja Viña Otano Gran Reserva Dark with mushroom notes of woodlands and barnyards, this wine's grape-skin tannins. have evolved toward supple pleasure, heady and earthy. There's a lot of toasty oak, but it plays a supporting role to the fruit- a blend of tempranillo with graciano and mazuelo. The persistent mouthwatering flavor makes this a wine for grilled mackerel or grilled mai- take mushrooms.
Winter Edition, November 2023.
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91+ |
View from the Cellar |
Viña Otano’s 2015 Gran Reserva bottling has a touch more Graciano in the blend than the 2016 Reserva, as the blend here is eighty percent Tempranillo, fifteen percent Graciano and five percent Mazuelo. The wine is given fully two years aging in small barrels, with the oak again a combination of French and American. It was given an additional three years of bottle aging in the cellars prior to release. The 2015 Gran Reserva is ripe and nicely black fruity in personality, offering up scents of dark berries, roasted meats, cigar smoke, dark soil tones, celery seed, Rioja spices and cedary oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and complex, with a good core of fruit, excellent soil signature, ripe tannins and a long, tangy and gently new oaky finish. At eight years of age, I would love to see just a touch less new oak influence in the wine, but it certainly has the stuffing to eventually absorb the wood more completely. This is a good wine in the making, but it lacks a bit of the brightness that defines the wines from the great, old school bodegas like Cuné, La Rioja Alta and López de Heredia. 2031-2065+. John Gilman - Issue #103 January/February 2023. |
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90 |
Wine Enthusiast |
Deep garnet in the glass, this wine has aromas of cassis, milk chocolate and fennel pollen. Flavors of pomegranate, cranberry, cocoa powder, coffee bean and butterscotch hover above a layer of grippy tannins that fill the mouth and slowly drift away.
Mike DeSimone; Issue June - July 2023 |
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