LA RIOJA ALTA SA Gran Reserva 904 'Seleccion Especial' - Rioja Alta 2015 Bottle

Description

La Rioja Alta Gran Reserva 904 Selección Especial 2015 is an outstanding wine, celebrating the estate’s dedication to quality and craftsmanship. This vintage has achieved 100 points from The Wine Advocate and 98 points from Decanter. It features a blend of 90% Tempranillo and 10% Graciano, offering enticing aromas of sweet blackberries, liquorice, and delicate floral notes. The palate is remarkably structured, with fine, velvety tannins that enhance its elegance. Wine Enthusiast commends its complexity and the interplay of oak with ripe fruit, while James Suckling notes its power and rich character. With superb balance and freshness, this exquisite Gran Reserva is perfectly suited for ageing, with optimal drinking potential from 2025 to 2035, delivering a captivating experience.

*****

The First Ever ‘Selección Especial’
For the first time in its century-long history, La Rioja Alta Gran Reserva 904 has been designated ‘Selección Especial’. The picture of elegance, complexity, and concentration - and with incredible capacity to age - this wine is not to be missed.

A Unique Release
‘Selección Especial’ is a term used by La Rioja Alta only in the very finest vintages, years where the growing conditions produce a wine so extraordinary it must be celebrated. Viña Ardanza has seen four vintages elevated to this level, 890 twice, leaving this first 904 ‘Selección Especial’ a rare beast indeed.

The 2015 vintage was praised by winemaker José Saenz as “without a doubt, one of the best ever for us in Rioja”. The Atlantic influence on the season was especially pronounced, creating wines of superb freshness and taut structure. The fruit was selected by handpicking in the vineyard, then again in the winery by a state-of-the-art optical sorter, and then repeatedly whittled down by the winemaker during its four years in barrel, resulting in a 904 that represents the best of this incredible vintage.

La Rioja Alta s.a.
Formed by five families in the late 19th century, the La Rioja Alta S.A. winery is one of the most iconic names in Fine Wine, and a benchmark for the traditional style of Rioja. Their Tempranillo-led reds are aged for remarkably long periods in barrels from the producer’s cooperage, and they are one of the last remaining producers to rack their wines by hand and by candlelight – which they do every six months. While they always upheld standards and tradition, La Rioja Alta S.A. never stopped experimenting and pushing for better quality, offering some of the purest, more precise expressions of Tempranillo in the world.

*****
JAMES SUCKLING 98 points
Friday, Aug 18, 2023
Very impressive complexity and width on the nose, showing lots of savoriness with mushrooms, sandalwood, cedar, sweet spices, dried oranges and tobacco. Really even and juicy on the palate with fine and very present tannins. Juicy, creamy finish lasting a minute. Really elegant and layered. It goes on and on. A real Rioja Gran Reserva and I recommend buying a case! The first vintage that La Rioja Alta labelled ‘Seleccion Especial’. So appealing now, but this will evolve well in the next 20 years. - Zekun Shuai

VINOUS 95 points
"Vivid ruby. Expansive red and blue fruit preserve, tobacco, potpourri, spice and botanical herb aromas, with vanilla and smoky mineral notes emerging as the wine opens up. Sappy, penetrating and gently chewy on the palate, offering vibrant, mineral- and spice-accented black raspberry, bitter cherry and rose pastille flavors that deepen and turn sweeter on the back half. Shows sharp focus and floral lift on the impressively long, youthfully tannic finish, which leaves behind notes of candied blue fruits and spicecake.

THE WINE ADVOCATE 95 points
Drink Date 2024 - 2035
They used the words subtlety, elegance, finesse, delicacy and silk to define the 2015 Gran Reserva 904 Selección Especial, a blend of 90% Tempranillo from their vineyards in Villalba, Briñas and Rodezno with 10% Graciano from the Montecillo vineyard in Fuenmayor that was picked 23 days later than the Tempranillo. The grapes were sorted optically for the first time, and they fermented in stainless steel where the wine went through malolactic too. The wine was put in barrel in January 2016—used American oak barrels built by their own coopers—where it matured for four years, during which time it was racked every six months. 2015 was a healthy vintage with balanced ripeness that delivered wines with good aging potential. They thought the wine needed a little more time in bottle to polish those tannins and have decided to hold it and release the wine around March 2023; it will be marked Selección Especial, the first 904 to do so, as they have very high hopes for this year and believe it's one of the finest vintages. They think it will develop the sophistication in the palate with a little more time and that is should achieve the silkiness that is the signature of 904. This is very 2015; I saw quite strong tannins in all the 2015 wines I tasted from Rioja Alta. There are some 150,000 bottles of this. - Luis Gutiérrez 07/22

VINOUS 95 points
Drinking Window 2025 - 2036
From: Rioja: The Past Is Always Present (Apr 2021)
Vivid ruby. Expansive red and blue fruit preserve, tobacco, potpourri, spice and botanical herb aromas, with vanilla and smoky mineral notes emerging as the wine opens up. Sappy, penetrating and gently chewy on the palate, offering vibrant, mineral- and spice-accented black raspberry, bitter cherry and rose pastille flavors that deepen and turn sweeter on the back half. Shows sharp focus and floral lift on the impressively long, youthfully tannic finish, which leaves behind notes of candied blue fruits and spicecake. - By Josh Raynolds on April 2021

DECANTER 94 points
Tasted by: Ines Salpico
(at Manhatta, New York, 07 Jun 2025)
Part of 100 years of Rioja masterclass: DFWE New York 2025
Drinking Window: 2025 - 2038
Truly succulent and structured, this has an expressive nose of camphor, vanilla, rose petals and tobacco leaves. These hover over a thick bed of meaty plum, fig and black olive. Cedar, buttered toast and Christmas cake play in the background. Fine and vivid acidity sustains freshness throughout. Lovely spicy layer of cinnamon, nutmeg and white pepper. will benefit from a few more years in bottle to hone its structure and tannins.

JANCIS ROBINSON 17.5 points
Quintessential oak complexity on the powerful and generous nose. One of the few wines in the world that you can really be confident about when blind: that sweet vanilla essence is so prominent. Mushy black fruit with sweet cherry as well. Satisfyingly traditional, and even though it is 100% ready to drink, these wines are famously ageable too. (RH)