Spain rose to the top of our weekly tasting report of 613 wines, thanks to the iconic winemaker Telmo Rodriguez, who made two idiosyncratic and breathtaking 100-pointers from Rioja and a bunch of other atypical, terroir-transparent wines that came close to matching the quality of the former.
For one of our perfect wines, the Compañia de Vinos Telmo Rodriguez Rioja Las Beatas 2019, the quest for perfection came effortlessly, with a natural flair and intuition. This linear field blend of nine varieties, based on tempranillo, comes from the 1.9-hectare Las Beatas vineyard – a Grand Cru in the village of Labastida that Rodriguez considers to be Rioja’s version of Vosne-Romanee.
The wine’s weightless and soulful sensibility had Senior Editor Zekun Shuai feeling its magic, with nothing deliberate on the palate except immaculate purity. A scented, floral perfume flows gently through this wine, with nimble berries and sea urchin adding to the incredibly silky, ethereal and mineral palate.
Another single-vineyard offering from Labastida, the Compañia de Vinos Telmo Rodriguez Rioja Tabuerniga 2019, is as pure and soft-spoken as Las Beatas but accentuated by more verticality from the tannins, and comes with a tad more graciano. Rodriguez also delivered two wines from vineyards in Lanciego, which are on par with the Labastida vineyards. His Bodega Lanzaga La Estrada 2019 is a tangy, peppery offering of mainly tempranillo with some graciano – an atypical blend for a Rioja traditionalist – while the Bodega Lanzaga Rioja El Velado 2019 shows great depth and implicit minerality from a 0.93-hectare vineyard with a significant portion of garnacha.