Lopez de Heredia 2012 Rioja Gran Reserva Rosado “Vina Tondonia”

Lopez de Heredia’s Gran Reserva Rosado is a unicorn wine. Collectors and wine lovers around the world wait months – often years – just to get their hands on a bottle or two of this remarkably rare and very special rose. And it is truly unlike any rose that you will find anywhere else. Produced from 91 year old vines, fermented using indigenous yeasts in the same 142 vats they have used at this winery since the very beginning. The wine is then aged in American Oak barrels for at least 4 years and then in bottle for an additonal 4 years before it’s release to market.

Bodegas Lopez de Heredia is one the great wine producers of Spain. For more than 140 years, this venerable and grand name has been a benchmark for classic traditional Rioja wines. Great wine producers around the world seem constantly engaged in a never-ending debate over the relative merits of progress vs tradition, struggling to find the right balance between embracing technology and its apparent benefits, while not turning their backs on the very central role that history and heritage play in the production of fine wines.

And then there is Lopez de Heredia Vina Tondonia…

There is perhaps no better example of a wine producer anywhere on earth that has thrown all their chips in on tradition, history and heritage – and few dispute that for more than 140 years they’ve had the right cards to win that bet – than Lopez de Heredia. The Tondonia vineyard was established in 1913. This property has been the essence of the family estate, yielding the raw materials that have made Lopez de Heredia a singular producer of wines epitomizing the profile and style that has made Rioja one of Spain’s preeminent wine regions.