Roda 1 Reserva 2016

Bodegas Roda are at the cutting edge of wine-making in Rioja. A family-owned winery, Mario Rotllant and his team, undertook an exhaustive analysis of many of the best vineyard sites in La Rioja Alta and picked 17 of the very best of these. Although the company was established in 1987, the winery in Haro wasn’t completed until 2001. By then it had gained its reputation as one of the top producers in the region.

“It is, without a shred of doubt, the finest Roda I Reserva I have ever tasted” Matthew Jukes

The focus is on old vines, especially those cultivated as bush vines and their continued drive for excellence and meticulous standards have produced a brilliant wine in 2016. The warm ‘Mediterranean’ vintage gives a generous, juicy, perfumed and dark fruited wine with ample concentration, layered complexity and gorgeous balsamic acidity. This is held together beautifully with delicate ripe silky tannins coming from the 30-year-old bush vines, which have imparted their magic into this wine.

Black fruits dominate on the nose with aromas of black plums and cherries with undernotes of earth, chocolate, aromatic plants and sweet spice, cinnamon and cloves. On the palate it is elegant and very fine. Plums and cherries fill the mouth with cocoa, and sweet spice. Fresh and with silky tannins.