Rare, insider-favorite library Rioja
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2009 Diez-Caballero Reserva Rioja 750 ml
- Curated by unrivaled experts
- Choose your delivery date
- Temperature controlled shipping options
- Get credited back if a wine fails to impress
Advocate: “Flies Under the Radar and Deserves Better Recognition”
On release, Wine Advocate praised the 2009 Diez-Caballero Reserva as a “very good value,” glowingly declaring that it “has the stuffing and balance to develop in bottle.” Today, it’s in the absolute heart of its drinking window.
Coming from a winery that “flies under the radar and deserves better recognition,” according to Advocate, this wine’s fantastic bottle age makes it a must for anyone who loves the savory, earthy, floral-inflected profile that only comes with bottle age for Rioja.
Diez-Caballero is an insider-favorite Rioja because they’re a small, hands-on, Bordeaux-inspired producer that makes wines solely from estate-owned and -farmed vineyards—then sells them at exceptionally reasonable prices.
The 2009 Reserva comes solely from their rows in El Gallo—one of the most revered vineyard sites in the Rioja Alavesa subregion. There, Tempranillo vines grow in a mixture of chalk and clay soils at a full 550 meters above sea level—quite high for Rioja. The elevation creates wines of impressive zest and verve, and in a hot vintage like 2009, the synthesis of bright natural acidity and powerful ripeness yielded a wine capable of aging beautifully.
Winemaker Antonio Diez-Caballero took those perfectly ripe grapes and applied delicately modern winemaking touches, first fermenting them in cement tanks to preserve their fresh-fruit character and soften their tannins, then aging the wine in French oak barrels for a full 18 months to provide polish.
After bottling, the wine sat in the bodega’s dark, cold cellars until just this fall, when we had the opportunity to taste it on a recent trip to Spain—and we knew instantly that we had to get it for our members.