2018 Imperial Reserva
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The 2018 Imperial Reserva is terrific, with a dense, concentrated style carrying ample ripe black fruits, smoked tobacco, graphite, and spicy wood-like aromas and flavors. A blend of 85% Tempranillo with the balance Graciano, Mazuelo, and Garnacha, I love its overall balance, and it has full-bodied richness, ripe tannins, and a gorgeous finish. It’s impossible to resist today, yet this beauty has another 15+ years of longevity ahead of it. I'd be thrilled to drink a bottle.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Luis Gutiérrez, Wine Advocate
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The red 2018 Imperial Reserva keeps the brand profile of finesse, precision and power, produced with grapes that were picked between October 8th and 26th in a year like in the past—cold, rain and snow followed by a warm summer. It's a blend of Tempranillo and 15% Graciano, Mazuelo and Garnacha that were put through optical sorting and fermented in oak vats with a 20-day maceration. It matured in barrel for 24 months. It's 14% alcohol and has a pH of 3.57. It's a textbook Reserva from Haro, fine-tuning the grapes they use here trying to control the power of this cuvée, which has to be powerful but keeping the freshness. This is quite young and lively, quite impressive, really very good, getting close to the complexity of a Gran Reserva but with the extra oomph of its youth. 150,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in June 2021.
About the producer
CVNE, or Compañía Vinicola del Norte de España (the Northern Spanish Wine Company), is one of Rioja’s leading names. With its various brands – Cune, Viña Real, Contino and Imperial – CVNE produces both large volumes and high quality, with its Imperial Gran Reserva one of the region’s finest wines.