2000 Bodegas Urbina Seleccion Rioja 750 ml

Time moves differently in Spain, as anyone who has tried to keep a punctual lunch date in Madrid can tell you. 

It’s a place where 1870—the year Bodegas Urbina got its start—can feel like yesterday, and where 22-year-old wine like this one can taste as fresh as a just-picked black cherry.

After a marathon two-decade stay in the cellar, this ethereal Spanish beauty is JUST waking up and stretching out, offering a splendor of tertiary complexity on the nose and palate—and it’s got years to go.

The strength of the estate’s terroir on its 185 acres and the timeless appeal of the Urbina’s classically styled winemaking account for this thread of continuity that stretches back through decades. Bush-trained vines fed only organic fertilizer, with no pesticides or fungicides used, limit yields and keep grapes teeming with concentration and fresh acidity. Some of the plots that the winery’s founder Salvador Urbina first cultivated over 150 years ago are still in use today.

For this Seleccion cuvée, the family’s current generation—Angel, Pedro, and Santiago—choose the estate’s best Tempranillo grapes from the fields of limestone and sand, imparting earthy, mushroomy notes that play off delicate tones of violets and bay laurel. Old-school basket presses gently extract the juice, which ferments on native yeasts in stainless steel. After 16 months of aging in oak barrels, the show curtains go down—and aren’t raised for almost a quarter of a century.

It’s a gamble that a winery as rooted in the past as this one can afford to take. They do the hard work for you, and for less than $30, you can reap the extraordinary rewards.