Wine & Spirits - Winter 2020 - 72

Top 100 Wineries

O LD WO R LD

R. López de Heredia

Trapiche

SPAIN | RIOJA
Nineteenth-century style is up to date at Haro's founding house,
readily expressed in classic Rioja wines.

ARGENTINA | MENDOZA
Daniel Pi recognizes his top growers with a magniﬁcent trio of
single-ﬁnca wines.

MERCEDES &
MARIA JOSE
LOPEZ DE HEREDIA

STUBBORNNESS AND TRADITION ARE AT THE HEART
of Spanish culture, a linkage embodied by the
López de Heredia family, whose Rioja wines feel
completely out of time, like some sort of glorious time capsule from an age of subtlety rather
than bombast. The López de Heredia siblings
still work in the ways of their great-grandfather,
bodega-founder Don Rafael López de Heredia.
That means working only with estate-grown
fruit-a rare practice even in Don Rafael's time,
and deﬁnitely not the standard today-handharvesting in small baskets, fermenting with
ambient yeasts in large upright wooden vats,
aging for years in house-made barrels (14,000 of
them) and then years in bottle prior to release.
That stubbornness has preserved a window into
the past, hearkening back to a time when long
aging in cask and bottle was standard practice.
The wines share incredible freshness for their
age. -S.E.S

2007 Rioja Reserva Viña Tondonia ($50, 94
points) Viña Tondonia is a collection of parcels centered on a rise above the Ebro River, where it forms a
wide loop outside of Haro. The López de Heredia family farms these parcels as bush vines, blending their
fruit into long-lived wines. This vintage, made with 70
percent tempranillo, 20 percent garnacha and a little
graciano and mazuelo, is a lovely, elegant Rioja in a
classical mode. There is something magical about
well-aged Rioja, and there is often something magical
about Viña Tondonia, suggested by this wine's gentle,
lasting touch of bright, sunny cherry and deep earth
tones, the ﬂavors delicately saturated. Get some.

FOUNDED:

1877
OWNERS:

The López de
Heredia family
WINEMAKERS:

Julio Cesar, Maria
José, Mercedes &
Rafael López de
Heredia
VITICULTURIST:

Julio Cesar López
de Heredia
ACRES OWNED:

420
ANNUAL

2007 Rioja Reserva Viña Bosconia ($40, 93
points) This wine grows at a south-facing vineyard
along the Ebro River, less than a mile from the family's cellars in Haro. The vines average 40 years of
age; the blend includes tempranillo (80 percent) with
garnacha and a little graciano and mazuelo. Aged
for ﬁve years in American oak barrels, then in bottle
at the winery before release, it's friendly and jaunty,
spicy in its delicate fragrance of tart cherries and
strawberries. The pleasure of drinking a 12-year-old
wine with so much energy and freshness makes the
$40 price seem like a steal.

50,000 cases
ESTATE GROWN:

100%
IMPORTER:

Think Global
Wines, Santa
Barbara, CA

2017 La Consulta Terroir Series Finca Orellana
Malbec ($50, 95 points) Starting out as a competition among Trapiche's growers, the Terroir Series has
evolved to focus on the three vineyards Pi has found
to provide the most consistently outstanding fruit.
Finca Orellana is one of them, a 71-year-old vineyard
at 3,247 feet in elevation in La Consulta. In 2017, it
produced a wine that's plush and elegant, with ﬂoral
notes that accentuate the ﬁnesse of its tannins and
the rich-but-weightless quality of its plummy ﬂavors.
FOUNDED:

1883
OWNER:

Grupo Peñaﬂor
WINEMAKER:

Daniel Pi
VITICULTURIST:

Marcelo
Belmonte

2010 Rioja Crianza Viña Cubillo ($29, 91 points)
A blend of tempranillo (65 percent), garnacha (25
percent), graciano and mazuelo, this is a classical, earthy Rioja with scents of anise and cool, lasting spice. It's lean, peppery and gentle, deliciously
mature, ready to serve with roast ﬁsh in a mushroomand-Rioja reduction.

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2017 Gualtallary Terroir Series Finca Ambrosía
Malbec ($50, 94 points) From a vineyard planted in
the early 2000s in the heights of Gualtallary, this is
the lushest of Trapiche's three Terroir Series wines. It
lives up to its name in its sunlight-saturated ﬂavors,
as dark and juicy as a black plum in August. It's just
beginning to reveal its complexity in hints of spice
and earth.

ACRES OWNED:

2,500
ANNUAL

PRODUCTION:

DANIEL PI

DANIEL PI RECALLS VISITING GROWERS IN 2003,
his ﬁrst vintage at Trapiche: "I went to one vineyard and met two brothers, one 87, the other 80
years old. We talked for a while, and then one
of them said, 'Oh, we're happy with Trapiche,
but the last word is my father's.' We went out to
the vineyards, and there he was, 104 years old. I
thought, this guy will never see a bottle with his
name on it." That encounter was the catalyst for
the Terroir Series, a trio of wines that celebrates
Trapiche's top growers, and, by extension, the
varied expressions malbec can show depending
on site-something Pi's 2017 releases do clearly
and elegantly. Pi's focus on terroir extends
beyond Trapiche's small-production selections:
Since he's come on, he's shifted the company's
attention from Mendoza's warm lowlands into
the cooler altitudes of the Uco Valley. Acknowledging his intensive work on massal selections,
Trapiche launched a nursery six years ago, which
now propagates a million vines a year. "It's not
just for us," Pi says. "It's our social responsibility
to our growers, that they have the best material
to work with." -T.Q.T.

PRODUCTION:

3 million cases
ESTATE GROWN:

50%
IMPORTER:

The Wine Group,
Ripon, CA

2017 El Peral Terroir Series Finca Coletto Malbec ($50, 93 points) In 2017, Finca Coletto is the
tightest, tartest and wildest of the Terroir Series-
characteristics that may be due to the altitude (3,697
feet), or the age of the vines, planted in 1950 and still
on their own roots, as the ﬂood irrigation used here
keeps phylloxera at bay. It's invigorating, more wild
strawberry than plum, with prickly, peppery resinous
accents and a driving intensity.

Wine & Spirits - Winter 2020

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