This post is also available in: Español (Spanish)
As you know, we’ve been bringing you a series of video tastings via the Arzuaga YouTube channel and our social media (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) so you can get to know our wines better. Today, we’d like to tell you about Gran Reserva, a very exclusive wine since it’s only made in years with the best vintages. A traditional red inspired by the memory of how wines traditionally used to be in Europe, as Ignacio Arzuaga, the managing director of Bodegas Arzuaga, notes.
This wine is made using a blend of Tempranillo grapes from a nearly hundred-year-old vineyard, plus 4% Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. It spends 48 months ageing in French oak barrels. It’s a very special wine for Ignacio Arzuaga, who says ‘great wines are those that endure over time and get better in the glass and offer us different aromas as the years go by’. In addition, to define this Gran Reserva, Ignacio opts for the term vino da meditazione: a wine that invites us to enjoy it and get whisked away.
Our Gran Reserva 2010 is a wine for people looking for something more than power and fruit in a red wine. It’s a very delicate, very subtle wine that also has depth and good aromatic intensity with red fruits, plums and even incense. In short, ‘a very intense wine’, as Arzuaga notes.
In the last phase of the tasting, when it comes to actually tasting the wine, what you notice quickly is that this is a long, persistent wine. There’s also a very clean, silky and velvety tannin. It’s worth pointing out that the acidity and freshness are still there, even after 10 years. This shows that it’s still young, even after the time in oak.
Finally, another interesting aspect is that the bottle has an opaque exterior to protect the wine from light. All these characteristics give the wine an interesting combination of assets, making this Gran Reserva 2010 one of the best in Bodegas Arzuaga’s wide range of wines.