Last Sunday I opened a bottle of white wine from the Rioja winery López de Heredia. Their white wines are very different to almost any other white wine produced in Spain. The wine that was drink was the Viña Tondonia Reserva from 1991, a 22 year old white wine! It was 90% Viura and 10% Malvasia and had been aged for 6 years! in used American oak barrels. You would think that the treatment the wine receives would be completey detrimental to the production of a fine wine. Well, they are not wines that appeal to everyone. In fact, my wife was not that keen on the wine and I ended up drnking the greater part of the bottle. On opening the wine, I decanted it for a hour and then put it back in the bottle. As you can see in the photo below the wine was a deep golden colour. On the nose I detected aromas of lanolin, dried apricots, citric fruit and nuts with a slight sherry-like character due to some oxidisation. On the palate the wine was very much alive with good acidity and a creamy texture. It had incredible length and for me it’s one of those wines that produce a real emotional response.