2015 El Coto de Imaz Rioja Reserva 750 ml

Boldly perfumed and powerful on the palate, the 2015 Coto de Imaz is one of the most complete Rioja Reservas we’ve tried in the last year. A stately, richly-textured red that’s aged at the winery to deliver delicious drinking out of the gate, it’s also one of the best values we’ve seen in the genre, with a 96-point score, layers of complexity, and a balance of fruit and secondary flavors that screams classical Rioja.

We aren’t the only ones enthralled, either. This Reserva earned a 96-point score and Gold Award at Decanter’s Asia Wine Awards, and Wine Spectator gave it Smart Buy honors—a testament to the wine's universal appeal and the fantastic complexity for its price.

Between its Bordeaux influences and warm Spanish climate, old-school Rioja crosses genre in appeal, and few estates do it better than Coto de Imaz. Their Reserva remains one of the best values in the region, delivering tremendous drink-now appeal.

As soon as it hit our glasses, this wine enchanted us with its lushly layered aromas. It interlaces threads of violet, lavender, and sagebrush around a core of red plum and dried cherry. Each sip showcases compact tannins that carry black cherries, tobacco, and truffle. Anyone who loves classic Old-World bottles, from Bordeaux to Brunello, will absolutely dig on this. 

Bodegas El Coto was founded in 1970 by a group of expert winemakers, who pooled the best grapes from their own 300 acres of Tempranillo at Cenicero, in Rioja’s heart. Cenicero’s terroir has long been revered as the source of some of the very best Riojas, delivering complete wines that combine the elegant structure of Rioja Alta with the full body of Rioja Alavesa. El Coto’s top wines, labeled Coto de Imaz after the 16th-century Imaz hunting lodge belonging to the Bodega’s owners, are sourced exclusively from Cenicero grapes to this day.

But the core reasons we gravitate towards Coto de Imaz are the Bodega’s ultra-traditional cellar methods, which enabled the 2015 to develop with such wonderful balance and grace. The long, slow fermentation was followed by 18 months of aging in American oak barricas and then several more years in bottle. The result is classic Rioja that's full and luxurious, yet elegant and fresh on the palate, with a perfume that can fill a house.