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2018 C.V.N.E. (Compañía Vinícola del Norte de España) Rioja Imperial Reserva

$39.99
2018 C.V.N.E. (Compañía Vinícola del Norte de España) Rioja Imperial Reserva

A recent arrival, the C.V.N.E. (Compañía Vinícola del Norte de España) is one of the great producers of Rioja, and we have the Imperial Reserva today, which has been a best buy for the category for many years and fantastic in 2018. Founded in 1879, C.V.N.E., wineries in the Rioja region continue to make excellent traditional wines. The 2018 Imperial Reserva comes from their "Imperial" winery in Haro, founded in the 1920s. It's a small winery that produces unique wines that are only made in great vintages and crafted predominantly from Tempranillo sourced from high altitude sites at around 2,000ft elevation and averaging 40 years old. 2018 is textbook Alta Rioja sourced from multiple plots that bring a lot of diversity and complexity to the finished wine. Twice-sorted fruit is fermented with yeasts selected from the vineyards specific to the Imperial wines and aged for two years in multiple types of oak depending on the parcel the grapes were sourced from. The wine is then aged for another year in a bottle before it is released, giving the wines some nice age before they get to the consumer while adhering to the rules for the Reserva designation. It is a robust and structured Rioja, showing excellent complexity and a sense of place as a spot-on representation of this high-altitude Rioja style. 2018 is up there with the best of them, and we have excellent pricing on this bottling that just arrived in stock.
Wine Advocate (Luis Guttierrez) 94 pts! "The red 2018 Imperial Reserva keeps the brand profile of finesse, precision and power, produced with grapes that were picked between October 8th and 26th in a year like in the past—cold, rain and snow followed by a warm summer. It's a blend of Tempranillo and 15% Graciano, Mazuelo and Garnacha that were put through optical sorting and fermented in oak vats with a 20-day maceration. It matured in barrel for 24 months. It's 14% alcohol and has a pH of 3.57. It's a textbook Reserva from Haro, fine-tuning the grapes they use here trying to control the power of this cuvée, which has to be powerful but keeping the freshness. This is quite young and lively, quite impressive, really very good, getting close to the complexity of a Gran Reserva but with the extra oomph of its youth. 150,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in June 2021.

John Gilman 93+ "The 2018 Rioja “Imperial” Reserva from Cuné is a beautiful and absolutely classic rendition of this important bottling. The wine comes in at fourteen percent octane in this warm summer and offers up stunningly pure aromatics of plum, black cherries, cigar wrapper, a beautiful base of soil tones, toasted coconut, a lovely array of Rioja spice tones and just a touch of cedary oak. On the palate the wine is deep, pure and full, with a great core of fruit, superb soil signature and grip, ripe, buried tannins, lovely focus and a very long, very complex finish. This is still a puppy and deserves some bottle age to fully soften up its tannins and claim that classic, velvety Rioja palate impression. But, in due course, it is going to be stellar. (Drink between 2027 - 2085)"

2018 C.V.N.E. (Compañía Vinícola del Norte de España) Rioja Imperial Reserva

2018 C.V.N.E. (Compañía Vinícola del Norte de España) Rioja Imperial Reserva

$39.99
$39.99

A recent arrival, the C.V.N.E. (Compañía Vinícola del Norte de España) is one of the great producers of Rioja, and we have the Imperial Reserva today, which has been a best buy for the category for many years and fantastic in 2018. Founded in 1879, C.V.N.E., wineries in the Rioja region continue to make excellent traditional wines. The 2018 Imperial Reserva comes from their "Imperial" winery in Haro, founded in the 1920s. It's a small winery that produces unique wines that are only made in great vintages and crafted predominantly from Tempranillo sourced from high altitude sites at around 2,000ft elevation and averaging 40 years old. 2018 is textbook Alta Rioja sourced from multiple plots that bring a lot of diversity and complexity to the finished wine. Twice-sorted fruit is fermented with yeasts selected from the vineyards specific to the Imperial wines and aged for two years in multiple types of oak depending on the parcel the grapes were sourced from. The wine is then aged for another year in a bottle before it is released, giving the wines some nice age before they get to the consumer while adhering to the rules for the Reserva designation. It is a robust and structured Rioja, showing excellent complexity and a sense of place as a spot-on representation of this high-altitude Rioja style. 2018 is up there with the best of them, and we have excellent pricing on this bottling that just arrived in stock.
Wine Advocate (Luis Guttierrez) 94 pts! "The red 2018 Imperial Reserva keeps the brand profile of finesse, precision and power, produced with grapes that were picked between October 8th and 26th in a year like in the past—cold, rain and snow followed by a warm summer. It's a blend of Tempranillo and 15% Graciano, Mazuelo and Garnacha that were put through optical sorting and fermented in oak vats with a 20-day maceration. It matured in barrel for 24 months. It's 14% alcohol and has a pH of 3.57. It's a textbook Reserva from Haro, fine-tuning the grapes they use here trying to control the power of this cuvée, which has to be powerful but keeping the freshness. This is quite young and lively, quite impressive, really very good, getting close to the complexity of a Gran Reserva but with the extra oomph of its youth. 150,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in June 2021.

John Gilman 93+ "The 2018 Rioja “Imperial” Reserva from Cuné is a beautiful and absolutely classic rendition of this important bottling. The wine comes in at fourteen percent octane in this warm summer and offers up stunningly pure aromatics of plum, black cherries, cigar wrapper, a beautiful base of soil tones, toasted coconut, a lovely array of Rioja spice tones and just a touch of cedary oak. On the palate the wine is deep, pure and full, with a great core of fruit, superb soil signature and grip, ripe, buried tannins, lovely focus and a very long, very complex finish. This is still a puppy and deserves some bottle age to fully soften up its tannins and claim that classic, velvety Rioja palate impression. But, in due course, it is going to be stellar. (Drink between 2027 - 2085)"

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