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.

95+ The 2015 Rioja “Selección Especial 904” Gran Reserva from La Rioja Alta is crafted from a blend of eighty-nine percent tempranillo and eleven percent graciano in this vintage, with all of these vines at least sixty years of age. The wine was raised in four and a half year-old American oak barrels for thirty-three months prior to assemblage and bottling. The wine offers up a stunningly beautiful bouquet of red and black raspberries, cigar wrapper, a lovely array of Rioja spice tones, salty soil tones, woodsmoke and a lovely framing of coconutty American oak. On the palate the wine is deep, ripe and full-bodied, with a sappy core of fruit, superb soil inflection and grip, suave, seamless tannins, beautiful focus and balance and a very, very long, complex and utterly refined finish. This wine comes in at 14.5 percent in the ripe vintage of 2015, but there is absolutely no hint of heat on the backend, which is just utterly classical and stunning. At eight years of age, this wine is certainly approachable already, but in reality it is still a young wine and it will not to show all of its layers of complexity without another decade’s worth of bottle age. It is a brilliant wine.

I tasted again 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 that I had already tasted in mid-2022 before the wine was released. Time in bottle has done it some good, polishing the strong tannins that are the signature from 2015, though they are still not fully resolved, and a few more years in bottle will do it good. It's tasty, very classical, balanced and fresh. Impressive for such a powerful year. It was bottled in March 2020 after it matured in used American oak barrels for four years. - Luis Gutiérrez

The 2015 Gran Reserva 904 is a blend of 90% Tempranillo and 10% Graciano from Rioja Alta, aged for up to four years in American oak barrels. This garnet red wine with a brick sheen features an evolved and complex nose. It offers notes of cola, licorice, sour cherry and dried flowers, accompanied by hints of leather and herbs. On the palate, it is dry, silky and juicy, with fine-grained tannins and a chalky texture that lead to a nimble flow and a lingering finish. This is an old-school, precise Rioja that sets the standard for the region and will delight many a consumer. -- Joaquín Hidalgo

Rich and velvety, with a lovely range of mulled cherry, dark chocolate, herbed olive, eucalyptus, iron and milled pepper notes gliding across the palate in a supple, medium- to full-bodied frame. Reveals fine-grained, chalky tannins that are well-meshed with the dark, aromatic profile, while hints of forest floor and sandalwood linger on the finish. Tempranillo and Graciano. Better than previously reviewed. Drink now through 2035. – AN