96pts - The Wine Advocate

Drink Date:
2025 - 2046

I tased again the stellar 2016 Gran Reserva 904, which is nothing short of being spectacular and a textbook example of the grand traditional style. It was produced with 90% Tempranillo and 10% Graciano from a selection of vineyards in search of balanced wines with silky tannins, good acidity, character, length and aging potential. The élevage is long, four years in used barrels that average 4.5 years of age, during which time the wine is manually racked every six months. It's ripe with 14.5% alcohol, a pH of 3.61 and 5.4 grams of acidity, but the wine is super fresh and complex, with aromas of cigar box, dry tea leaves, balsam, aromatic herbs, camphor, antique furniture and tobacco. It's elegant and intense, with pungent flavors and very good freshness, and it's silky-textured and nicely structured, with volume, clean, intense and long. This is a very complete year for this wine. It's ready, but it should last; it hasn't really moved an inch from last year. 120,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in May 2021.

This Haro winery has 588 hectares of vineyards and only produces wines from their own grapes. They age their wines in 35,000 barrels, all 225-liter and made from American oak with an average age of four years. They produce an average of 1.5 million bottles per year, so they have the equivalent of eight years in stock between barrels and bottled wine. This year, they release their second Selección Especial from Viña Alberdi, the 2021 (the first was 2001). The range I tasted was very impressive and clean, in the more traditional style.

Published: Mar 12, 2026