2011 Bodegas Loli Casado Jaun de Alzate Rioja Gran Reserva 750 ml

Our VP of Wine, Eduardo Dingler, returned from a recent trip to Spain with a goodie bag of gifts: jamón ibérico sliced into wafer-thin, melt-on-your-tongue shavings; a wedge of Manchego aged to nutty perfection; and coins of rich, delicate chorizo spiced with smoked paprika.

But the last thing he pulled from his leather satchel proved to be the real showstopper: a pristine artifact of rural Old World Spain, hand-transported to our Napa office. Awakened from nearly nine years of suspended animation—two and half in oak—Bodegas Loli Casado’s 2011 Gran Reserva uncoiled into a stunning whirl of dried orange peel, dried roses, tobacco, and spice that was nothing short of sublime. Cashmere-soft on the palate yet still fresh, and layered with savory nuance.

The small, family-run estate had pulled off a coup, Eduardo told us. From gnarled vines planted 60-80 years ago by the current owner’s grandfather, the winery’s top cuvée had come out of nowhere to win a whopping 96-point review at the Decanter World Wine Awards. “Beautifully harmonious and full of energy,” raved the judges.

Eduardo’s meeting with third-generation owner and winemaker Loli Casado had resulted in a rare exclusive, the first window carved into the U.S market for this limited-production, aged masterpiece. Our members would be first in line to secure this 96-point wine at a smashing value. Today we have this nearly decade-old Rioja at a weeknight price—impossible to miss!

The world of Loli and her husband Jesus could not be farther from the glitzy scenes of wine awards and judges. In Rioja Alavesa, the smallest and northernmost subregion of Rioja, they work in the shadows of the Cantabrian mountains, where cool winds blow in from the Atlantic over the high-altitude plains. Nearly half of their 62 acres of vineyards are ancient, in an arid land where just 20 inches of annual rainfall sends roots deep into layers of chalky clay and limestone in search of water.  

Loli works the way her grandfather did in a pre-industrialization era of winemaking. Mixing a few modern techniques in with the use of stone presses and wood barrels, her Gran Reserva allows the high-altitude terroir to speak clearly across years of aging, capturing old-vine Tempranillo at its purest and most complex.