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RODA 1 Reserva Tempranillo 2003 500ml Blue florals lead, then comes the mineral-steel (gun barrel) aromatics, black bean and black jellybean. Some tobacco notes, well-defined with a particularly good finish, featuring soft, sweet, very dark smoky spices. Lush, floral and well structured – exactly what you want from a Roda 1. The juice itself is of really great quality – beautifully glyceric mid-palate, edged by spice and integrated slate/pencil case oak … just seamless. Scott Wasely These guys are not merely dedicated, they are detail-obsessed. Perhaps the most impressive (mahogany-scented) winery I’ve set foot in. Everything is about the production and retention of grape quality – the modern approach to wine through viticulture is nowhere given more commitment. All fruit off vineyards in excess of 30 years (some up to 80 years old), from a mixture of sandstone and clay/limestone soils, grown biodynamically. Fermentation in Seguin Moreau foudre, and aged in French barrels, with a minimum of oxidative handling, and neither filtered nor fined. Their concern is to make plush, violet-velvet wines with rich fruit and full, soft tannins pushing to the margins of the fruit, but always contained within. The winery is built into a mountain, and is a gravity-fed free run operation (you take a freight elevator to travel down the hill from one stage of making to another). Significantly, each vintage is made "on its merits" - work levels, style, etc are responses to vintage realities - not applications of a recipe. Scott Wasely