2015 Bodegas Urbina Viura Blanco Rioja Crianza 750 ml

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

It’s a place where 1870—the year Bodegas Urbina got its start—can feel like yesterday, and a wine like the 2015 Bodegas Urbina Viura Blanco Rioja Crianza can boast eight years of age and still retain the unmistakable shine of youth. This wine blew away our wine team for its quality/price rapport—it’s in a fresher style than legends like López de Heredia and it’s a fraction of the price. 

It isn't often you're able to open a perfectly mature, textbook white Rioja any night of the week. The taster is greeted with aromas of lemon oil and toasted oats, with fresh pear and baked apples. A deeply complex palate follows, layered with chamomile, dried almonds, salted peaches and light caramel. 

Bodegas Urbina, a Rioja Alta house founded in 1870, predates the creation of the Rioja DO by 63 years. Their holdings lie in and around the village of Cuzcurrita del Río Tirón, noted for a cooler climate and an extended harvest season that helps produce whites with beautiful vibrancy and freshness. Some of the plots that founder Salvador Urbina first cultivated over 150 years ago are still in use today. The vines are fed organic fertilizer, and no pesticides or fungicides are used. 

For this Viura Blanco Crianza cuvée, the winery chose the estate’s best Viura grapes, gently extracted the juice using old-school basket presses, then put the wine through native-yeast fermentation in stainless steel. After 6 months of aging in American oak barrels, it’s bottled, and held back some years before release.