Loa and lower: was £195, now £150 per case of six in bond

Our last parcel of 2007 Bodegas Loa ran out just as it was gaining a steady following. Normally, there are no second chances with limited production fine wines. But such is the weakness in the Rioja market that in this case not only did we go back and find more, but we were also able to negotiate a substantial discount for buying up the remaining stock. So Loa is back, with a bit more bottle age, and more than 20% cheaper than it was two years ago. Who says that fine wine prices only ever seem to go up?

For those who haven't encountered it before, Bodegas Loa is a relatively new project from ambitious family-owned wine producer Casalbor who built a new winery to house it. Loa is made from little pockets of very old vines, traditionally farmed and hand-picked, 100% Tempranillo, and aged in French oak rather than American. This is important and unusual in both Spain and Rioja and helps to retain the minerality and fruit, even when the wine is relatively young. The state-of-the-art winery allows production to flow from fruit to bottling with minimal disruption. At Loa they don't use the traditional designations, but it's somewhere between a reserva and gran reserva. More significantly it's between Rioja and St-Julien in style. The best of both worlds. /CW

'Intense currant, baked fruit, toasty cedar, pencil lead, smoke and vanilla bouquet. Fresh, intense and woody palate offering a rich, ripe entry, sumptuous syrupy fruit lifted by balsamic and very well-handled tannins. Classy stuff. 5 star award (18.67 points out of 20).' - Decanter panel tasting, Decanter.com, May 2012