2012 El Coto de Rioja Coto de Imaz Gran Reserva Rioja Spain 750 ml

Coto de Imaz Gran Reserva has always been a “Rioja of innate drama,” as Decanter waxed in their incredible 97-point review of the 2012 vintage. The masters of Tempranillo are known for their top-level Gran Reserva that can age for decades, but their prices make you wonder if they’ve left the Bodega in the last 30 years to see what their neighbors are charging today for their top bottlings. 

This wine grabbed the #9 spot in Wine Enthusiast’s Top 100 AND won Best in Show at the 2019 Decanter World Wine Awards, standing out among the top wines in the world. With 16,500 wines submitted to compete, it’s among the highest international honors a wine can achieve, which makes it a miracle we were able to secure this 97-point 2012 Gran Reserva. 

Few wines excite us more than aged Rioja Gran Reservas, especially when they turn out as exquisitely as this one—showing exotic spices and dried red fruit aromas before cherry and plum unfold generously on the palate. Notes of cedar and vanilla spice deepen as it evolves into layers of east-Asian spices, proving that this Gran Reserva is just reaching its ideal drinking window now (especially after a good decant), though it will keep singing for at least another decade.

Library vintages of Coto de Imaz Gran Reserva have become our go-to bottles for anniversaries, birthdays, or anytime we want to mark an occasion without breaking the bank. Among the top-selling Spanish wines in Europe, they're about as classic as it gets in Rioja, and never fail to impress. In the last few months alone, we’ve toasted with vintages of 1985 and 1994, and both proved as stately as they were savory and delicious—the kind of wines that elicited next-morning conversations reminiscing about how dreamy they were.  

With its Bodega-direct provenance, Coto de Imaz’s 2012 Gran Reserva has all the stuffing to go that kind of distance, but we love where it is today, with its generous primary fruit core and the tertiary aromatics developing to a crescendo of complexity with every swirl.

Bodegas El Coto was founded in 1970 by a group of expert winemakers, who pooled the best grapes from their own 300 acres of Tempranillo at Cenicero, in Rioja’s heart. Cenicero’s terroir has long been revered as the source of some of the very best Riojas, delivering complete wines that combine the elegant structure of Rioja Alta with the full body of Rioja Alavesa. El Coto’s top wines, labeled Coto de Imaz after the 16th-century Imaz hunting lodge belonging to the Bodega’s owners, are sourced exclusively from Cenicero grapes to this day.

But the core reasons we gravitate towards Coto de Imaz are the Bodega’s ultra-traditional cellar methods, which enabled the 2012 to develop with wonderful balance and grace. The long, slow fermentation was followed by two years of aging in American and French oak barricas, and then three more years in bottle before release. The result is classic Rioja that's full and luxurious, yet elegant and fresh on the palate, with a perfume that can fill a house.

We recommend filling your cellar with this 97-point Best in Show winner while you still can.