Nice review on the book. It is a top notch effort by three of the most knowledgeable and experience tasters in the Spanish wine scene. It will be extremely hard to find more qualified guys than any of them.

This book is a must buy for any Spanish wine enthusiast or anybody that is planning a trip to any of the regions included in this book. Most of the restaurants recommended have a good amount of older vintages of classic Riojas. They also have plenty of modern Riojas, but in many cases they are as expensive or more expensive than the older ones. Stores in Spain do not have that much supplies of older vintages and provenance of older vintages (20 years +) in stores is a little bit sketchier than in the restaurants.

The authors’ notion that the best of the modern wines “will in turn become classics” is pretty accurate based on my own experience of two decades of Spanish wine drinking. The problem is that some of those modern styled wines are very tasty when released and in the current culture of instant gratification very few people cellar them for more than a handful of years. Another issue is that a lot of folks have not tried any of the classics like Heredia from barrel one or two years from its vintage and realize how tannic and backward some of them could be. The classic wines are released when the winery feels they are ready to drink sort of like a LBV or Colheita port, while most of the modern ones are released a little after bottling following a Vintage port model.

The best examples of the first modern Riojas (1994-1996) are starting to turn into classic Riojas now. Although very tasty now, the ones from the 2001 vintage will require a little more patience than the 1994-1996 trio based on recent tastings.

FWIW, Víctor De la Serna is also the owner of Finca Sandoval.

SALUDos,
José

Derek – Yes, true, there has been an unfortunate dearth of books on Spain. There’s exciting stuff going on so I’m pleased that this book is now on retailers’ shelves.

Good piece. I’ll add the book to my Christmas list!

Tom