Wine of the week: a daring red for the summer barbie

published 14 June 2019

2015 CVNE, Imperial Reserva, Rioja, Spain £19.75, selected Co-ops

I have seen this wine a fewtimes recently and every time I taste it, I love it. It's interestingthat there are quite a few merchants retailing it right now and, because of this, you mightas well look around for a lowprice. You may be able to find it cheaper if you surf the internetfor a few hours, but you will not find it on the high street for less cash than this bonkers Co-op price tag of £19.75.

CVNE is a legendary estate and 2015 is a stellar vintage. It is a fairly fleshy vintage, too, and this means that it is drinking well already, but there is also the stamina here for this wine to develop well for a decade, too. You can have fun with this wine opening bottles whenever you like over the next ten years and, every time,it will tell you adifferent story.

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Made from 85% tempranillo and 15% graciano, mazueloand garnacha grapes,all old vines, and built on a fairly sturdy 14% alcohol framework, it uses both Americanand French oak in itsrecipe and this both accentuates its classical stance and also brings some flair. With four years of maturation, half in wood and half in bottle, this wine is already mellow and complex and I cannot think of a more daring wine for a summer barbecue or, for that matter, an autumnal game dish, a wintry beef stew, or succulent spring lamb.

Matthew Jukes is a winner of the International Wine & Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year (matthewjukes.com)

Matthew Jukes has worked in the UK wine business for well over three decades and during this time has written 14 wine books.

Matthew regularly lectures, judges, speaks at wine conferences and runs masterclass tastings for both corporate and private clients all over the world. Matthew is also the creator of his ground-breaking initiative, the One Day Wine School, an indulgent day of tasting and learning first performed in 2006.

He has been the MoneyWeek wine correspondent since 2006 and has written a weekly column for the Daily Mail’s Weekend Magazine since 1999. His four highly-acclaimed, annual wine reports – the Burgundy En Primeur Report, the Bordeaux En Primeur Report, the Piemonte Report and the 100 Best Australian Wines – are published on his website, www.matthewjukes.com.

Matthew is one of the world’s leading experts on Australian wine and, with Brisbane-based wine writer Tyson Stelzer, runs an annual competition in Australia to find ‘The Great Australian Red’. He was made Honorary Australian of the Year in the UK at the 2012 Australia Day Foundation Gala dinner.

Matthew is a winner of the International Wine and Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year Trophy. His thoughts, recommendations and tastings notes are followed very closely by the wine world at large.