1970 Bodegas Faustino Rioja Faustino I Gran Reserva 750 ml

Bodega-Cellared Gran Reserva Rarity

A few years ago, when I was the Deputy Editor for SOMM Journal magazine, I found myself in an unreal scene: with a handful of prominent L.A. wine buyers, blind-tasting an eight-vintage vertical of Faustino Gran Reserva Riojas at a famous wine personality’s stunning Pacific Palisades home. We tasted and talked through Faustino Gran Reservas that dated back a half-century. It was the kind of tasting I was sure would never happen again. And it came back in a rush of déja vu when, miraculously, a bottle of the 1970 Bodegas Faustino I Rioja Gran Reserva materialized at Wine Access. Following the Rioja tradition of wines being cellared at the winery until they were ready to drink, this Gran Reserva is showing beautifully right now, even better than I recall: a powerful bouquet of dried cherry, fig, mature tobacco, exotic spices and vanilla on the nose, still possessing freshness and energy. This is the perfect choice for a special occasion — although opening this 48 year old slice of history is a special occasion in itself. Just 72 bottles.

Unlike in Bordeaux, where drinkers have been expected to age their own wines to maturity, many classical Rioja producers held their bottlings in their own cellars until they were ready to drink. The 1970 Faustino — from a vintage that Decanter rated 4 out of 5 in Rioja — fits into that proud tradition, as the winery has not only handled the wine’s careful storage, but also has removed the burden and temptation that come with cellaring for a wine for decades.

Faustino is one of the standard-bearing producers of classic Rioja, founded in Rioja Alavesa by Euleuterio Martinez Arzok in 1861. In the 1920s, after phylloxera decimated their plantings, Euleuterio’s son Faustino reconstructed the vineyards, and it was his son — Julio Faustino Martinez — who renamed the winery after his father and started exporting the wine in the 1960s. Since then, Faustino’s frosted, textured Burgundy-shaped bottle has become an internationally-recognized symbol of Spanish wine excellence.

The 1970 Faustino was one of the top performers in the vertical I tasted in the Palisades, and at the time, the oldest wine — a 1964 — had several good years left in it. That’s exactly where the 1970 is now.

We found it to be seamlessly integrated, softened by age, and bursting with mature aromas of dried fruit, cigar box, mushrooms, earth, and leather: a gorgeous “drink now” wine that certainly has the patience to wait a few years until the perfect occasion makes itself known. This is classic Rioja, a Gran Reserva that spent 30 months in American oak before slumbering for an Rip Van Winkle-like four decades in the Bodegas Faustino cellars. I was fortunate enough to taste this wine twice, and it is something I want Wine Access clients to experience — if only just once.

Jonathan Cristaldi

Editor-in-Chief, Wine Access