Real Agrado, Las Planas Viura, Reserva, Rioja, Spain 2016

There’s no mistaking the origins of this hugely characterful white wine: it sings, shouts and dances white Rioja, in time-honoured guise. The honey-gold colour alerts you to the wine’s two unhurried years in wood -- and so do its aromas, which come storming out of the glass in a gratifying shower of vanilla, toast, cream, butter, honey, melon and quince. It’s complete, even extravagant in the mouth, with more dripping layers of wood, cool fruits and subtle oxidative complexities -- which time is beginning to mesh and meld, though you’d be welcome to carry on this work in your own cellar, too. It would accompany food very well -- despite being a meal in its own right. Let’s hear it for tradition.

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