Real de Asúa Rioja 2016

This is structured, with the biggest frame of the wines to date, and yet it is effortless, balanced, powerful but restrained, with black plum, liquorice root, cocoa, raspberry puree, leather, all held together by fine tannins that are shot through with juice. Really start to unpick in this wine what the Vialba soils can deliver, and it is utterly delicious. One of the wines of the vertical. New French oak for malolactic and ageing.