Rioja Rayos Uva - Graciano, Tempranillo & Garnacha

The very young red 2019 Rayos Uva shows nice aromas and the roundness of 2019, when Rivière had lower yields, and the fruit is very defined. There is a change to adapt to the vintage, so there's a little less Tempranillo and a lot more Graciano; the breakdown is 50% Graciano, 30% Garnacha and 20% Tempranillo, a very different blend from previous years. It has some herbal/peppery sensations and ripe fruit without excess. The palate is juicy and sleek with some sparks, and it has unusual freshness, quite good to balance this wine in a warmer year like 2019. Due to the COVID-19 lockdown, this was bottled a little later, and that could have been positive for the wine... 75,000 bottles produced. 91/100m Luis Gutièrrez

There are few wines from 2017, as he lost lots of grapes from the frost. The 2018s are getting a longer élevage, so I had few wines to taste. Rivière talked about "a disaster of 2017, with frost and lack of rain, so we got very low yields and hard tannins." 2018 was a challenging year, but August saved the harvest, and it's a winegrower vintage, very bad for industrial wines, a classical year with huge differences, capable of the best or the worst. 2019 is an easier and more homogeneous vintage with approachable and more immediate wines. 2020 was a year of mildew (more than in 2018) and challenging because the alcoholic degree was high early on but the grapes were green, so some harvested and others waited for proper ripeness. The great change in the wines is that, from 2019, La Bastid is no longer from La Bastida; it's from Cárdenas and has 30% Garnacha Blanca, and one-third now ferments in concrete (foudre and 500- and 600-liter barrels).