2001 Bodegas Roda Cirsion

Old-vine character here, baby! Dark berries, spice, mushrooms, bark and dried flowers. Full-bodied with round and velvety tannins, yet tight and polished. A great wine.

The 2001 Cirsion has a dense, dark broody bouquet that is still dominated by the new oak. With decanting for one hour there are some earthy, almost “horsey” aromas developing, but it remains rather laconic. The palate is full-bodied with arching ripe sweet tannins and layers of coffee-tinged dark berry fruit that did not overwhelm the senses. There is a sense of control to this 2001, yet it is difficult to pin down a sense of personality. Perhaps it is just a 30-year-old in the cusp of youth? On the aftertaste there are faint touches of white pepper and pain grille. I find this impressive more than pleasurable. Drink now-2025. The wines from Bodegas Roda should need no introduction. “We want to offer consistency,” winemaker Gonzalo Lainez told me. “We own and control 28 different vineyards and we choose the best seventeen every year. The Reserva is more red fruit character, more gastronomic. Other single vineyards that have a black fruit character are not so easy to find at an early stage and are blended into Roda I. So vineyards can end up in either, or be sold off. We work under three tenets. We like acidity in our wines, the oak must play a secondary role and the most important, supple tannins.” I enjoyed the wines of Roda, but to be frank, I often found myself searching for a sense of personality, as if the wines were somehow pre-designed instead of working with what Mother Nature gifts. They are highly pleasurable, but in an age where high-end consumers are looking for wines that say something, I would like to see the wines from Roda opening their mouths. Moreover, I do detect the oak too often, analogous to a supporting actor reading the leading actor’s lines. These tasting notes derive from samples that were mostly tasted twice in the UK. Importer: Kobrand, New York, NY; www.kobrandwine.com

From one of Rioja’s greatest vintages, the opaque purple-colored 2001 Cirsion offers a super-expressive nose of pain grille, pencil lead, mineral, incense, and black cherry along with the complexity of some bottle aging. On the palate it reveals the extra layers and intriguing, sexy flavors that only a superior vintage and old vines can deliver. Voluptuous, rich, bordering on exotic, it will continue to evolve for another 8-10 years and drink well through 2036. Jay Miller-eRobertParker.com # 189 Jun 2010