At Sean and Tab’s Christmas drinks with Hart, Sean, Tabs, Joe, Steffi, KW et al

Riojas are not my thing. For my palette and preferences, I just find them incredibly over-oaked, and almost always have offensive spices on the palette.

On the nose: this was very ripe, and had an immediate giant waft of vanilla. The good thing was that it wasn’t the cloying sweet vanilla cream; maybe more like vanilla beans from the pods. I found some dark red fruits hidden at the background.

The palate was shockingly more enjoyable to me. For one, although it still had SOME spiciness on the palette, it wasn’t nearly as offensive as everything I’ve tried to date, and it only emerged at the end of the finish. More importantly, it was just way more balanced than the nose and was actually quite Bordeaux-like with its fruit and wood in better balance.

Anyway. Leaving this unrated cos it seemed kinda pointless for me to rate something I have zero appreciation for. If anything, prolly makes more sense for me to just be wiling to try Riojas out curiosity, and hope that I develop a better sense of them