2012 Artadi, Vina Pison, Rioja

Always one of Rioja’s – indeed, Spain’s – best wines, this is from a 2.4ha vineyard in Laguardia, planted in 1945. It’s a superdense, richly textured wine with massive concentration, but it’s not forced or over-ripe. Intensely aromatic, with notes of liquorice and wild herbs, it beguiles your tastebuds with supple tannins, sweet oak and flavours of orange zest, Asian spices and blackberry and plum fruit.

A worthy follower of the 2010, the 2012 Viña El Pisón is the more aromatic of all the single-vineyard bottlings. It opens to showy aromas of violets and Asian spices like the Riojan version of a Chambolle-Musigny or Vosne-Romanée. The nose is very spicy, ripe and heady with open and expressive aromas of baked croissants, Morello cherries, herbal tea, aromatic herbs and balsamic notes that are remarkably complex for its age. The palate has volume and it seems to grow inside your mouth as it warms up. The persistence is remarkable, the wine stays in your tongue forever and is much more gentle than El Carretil, with great structure and an extra degree of silkiness. El Pisón is clearly a more complete, a more complex wine. A word class Rioja. 6,000 bottles produced.