Jane Anson: 100 Points
I tasted this at the property from barrel thrilled to follow it now in bottle. Grabs you from the first moments with its sage thyme dried flowers and incense aromatics clings to your nostrils drawing you in so much depth of flavour to the vivid raspberry and sour cherry fruits delicate and yet powerful. Hard to describe how little artifice is conveyed in the glass it's not a wine that is coated in new oak instead it is delicate poised crafted utterly gorgeous so moreish. Harvest October 6 to 18 3.8ha old gobelet vines with any replacements coming from massal selction. Iconic winemaking partnership Telmo Rodriguez and Pablo Eguzkiza. I hope everyone folllowed my advice from the first vintage to get on board because it is more than living up to its potential and its tiny quatities means that first come are almost certainly first served.
Decanter: 98 Points
The third vintage by oenologist-winemakers Telmo Rodriguez and Pablo Eguzkiza the 3.8-hectare single-vineyard cuvée from the limestone foothills of the Sierra de Toloño in Rioja Alavesa is made from a massal selection of Tempranillo Graciano Garnacha Granegro and Rojal. A lovely bright pink-red colour in the glass. Supple and succulent smooth and round such a lifeforce on show a step up slightly from last year - clearly so energetic forward and sleek. This is defined and powerful no doubt this is packing a punch in terms of intensity this year focussed and spiced the heat and oak come through strongly but it manages to stay the righ
Wine Advocate: 97 Points
The 2019 Yjar is the third vintage of their top-of-the-range wine designed for the international market and sold through the négociant system of Bordeaux. It was produced with a blend of Tempranillo Garnacha Graciano and other grapes from 3.8 hectares of selected plots from the Remelluri vineyards cropped from a challenging year with frost. This feels young but already very Rioja marked by the Garnacha which could represent around 30% of the bottled blend. It's tense and has abundant but fine-grained tannins a little Italian in style. They kept a lower alcoholic degree in 2019 a moderate 14% and the wine comes through as very elegant. This has to be my favorite vintage of Yjar. It spent 30 months in barrels of different sizes and foudres. 9049 bottles were filled in June 2022. I tasted the Yjar bottling (which is sold through the négociant system of Bordeaux) with the rest of Telmo Rodríguez's portfolio but I have included the note here again for context and completeness of the wines sold through La Place de Bordeaux in September 2023. There is a big change in the range of Lindes the wines produced with grapes from external local grape growers from the neighboring villages. They have bottled six different wines from 2020 selecting grapes from six different villages. In 2020 they had two episodes of hail and they had to sort select and discard and they also bought grapes from different growers including Marqués de Legarda from Ábalos. It was a learning exercise to understand the character of each of the villages in a journey that continues in 2021 and 2022 trying to enhance the differences between the villages with a simpler enology. There's also a Grandes Lindes a very special bottling from a truly exceptional vineyard. It might be a collection that grows in the future if they find more exceptional vineyards. This project has been ongoing since 2011 but they never released any of the wines until today with a wine from San Vicente de la Sonsierra from 2019 but they still have all previous vintages around 2000 bottles each year in their cellar. As for the classical Remelluri wines they are changing the concept; the new wines will come from the 2020 harvest and they have reduced quantities tremendously. They probably did less than 200000 kilos of grapes in 2020 when they had done 400000 kilos in the past... So I only tasted the white from 2020; the Yjar sold at La Place de Bordeaux in September 2023 and the classical reds will come in the future. Published: Aug 31 2023
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