| Score: |
93 JG.
"The 2000 Imperial Reserva from Cune offers up outstanding depth of sumptuous fruit on the palate and classic Rioja terroir, all wrapped up in a rather aggressive regimen of new French oak that would make any wannabe star in Châteauneuf du Pape proud. The surprising result is that as much as the spicy oak obscures and rather dominates the nose on the this wine, the palate has no problem carrying its lumber, and is very well-balanced and refined. The bouquet is very marked by its spicy French oak component, but underneath the veneer of new wood is a very, very good bottle of Rioja, as the wine offers up notes of black raspberries, raw cocoa, blood orange, fresh nutmeg, woodsmoke and a beautiful base of soil. On the palate the wine is fullish, suave and much less marked by the new oak than is the case with the bouquet, with a great core of fruit, lovely focus and balance, and a very long, complex and silky finish of most impressive intensity of flavor. Aromatically this wine is really hard to warm up to despite its impressive complexity (particularly for an unabashed lover of classic Rioja such as myself), for the wine is rather dominated on the nose by its new wood, but on the palate the wine is outstanding. If this is to be the new house style at C.V.N.E., I suppose I can live with it, as it is very hard to deny the brilliance of the underlying wine here. But why not drop the French oak program and take a very, very good wine and allow it to dance with all the magical grace and sashay of our parents’ Rioja? That said, I will still be putting some of this wine in my cellar, despite my nostalgia for old style Imperial, as the wine is superb." John Gilman, View From the Cellar #16, Aug 2008 |