A Spanish classic
It is one of Spain’s greatest traditionally-made Riojas, and it has been gracing Spanish and international dinner tables for a hundred years. It is only made in the best vintages, and it cellars extraordinarily well. It is named after the format in which it was originally sold to the English market, the Imperial pint. It is CVNE’s Imperial Gran Reserva.
CVNE is the 'Vinicultural Company of the North of Spain', more affectionately known as 'Cooney'. Founded at the peak of the Rioja boom in 1879 by two brothers, it remains family-owned and run to this day. In the early days, CVNE was a negociant company, but over time acquired some top vineyards in Rioja Alta, in the lee of the Sierra de Toloño. The fruit of these purchases came in 1920, with the first vintage of Imperial.
2015 was a hot vintage in Rioja, but as current CVNE owner Victor Urrutia laughed to me recently, 'we live in Rioja, we know how to deal with heat'. (Then he pulled out a bottle of the extraordinarily fresh and attractive bottle of the heatwave 1976 vintage, to prove his point). The 2015 is still young by the standards of traditional Rioja, glossy and fresh (think black cherry and new leather) but the way it builds and rises across the palate shows it has got all the structure to make old bones. In time it will go the way of the great vintages of yesteryear: the 2001, which is now intensely aromatic of tobacco, clove, incense, and eventually the 1968, mushroom and truffle. /NT
