The recent Heredia Blanco Gran Reserva thread got me poking around for high quality white Riojas and I ran across the 2014 CVNE Monopole Gran Reserva. I’ve had the regular Monopole bottling, thought it was good not great, but had no idea they produced a Gran Reserva version. Apparently 2014 is the first vintage.
Seems like an interesting wine. Not sure whether it would be worth the $100+ it retails for. Does anyone on the board know much about it? Have any of you tried it?
Any other high quality Rioja whites to look out for? Ygay seems super interesting, but is of course, even more unobtanium than Heredia, unfortunately.
I recently had the CVNE Monopole Clasico bottling and I agree that it was good and had some interesting character but not outstanding. However I haven’t had the Monopole Gran Reserva.
Another recommendation is the Honorio Rubio Anadas Edicion Limitada. I had it during a tasting a while ago and I have a bottle of the 2014 “version” in the cellar (it is made in the solera method). But it appears to be very hard to find too (no wine-searcher listings in the US).
Did you have the regular Monopole or the Monopole Clasico? I think the clasico is a much more interesting and better wine than the regular version. Not sure I would pay 100 for it when I could get the Gravonia/Tondonia for half that price but I haven’t tried the GR either. Although the Monopole clasico is very different from the LdH whites, given that a lot of its interesting character comes from the sherry that’s added.
Monopole Classico is definitely more interesting than the regular Monopole. It retails for about $27CAD (all in) up here. I’m going to keep an eye out for the Gran Reserva now. Qualitatively, I find the delta between Monopole Classico and Gravonia Blanco to be smaller than Monopole Classico and Tondonia Blanco Reserva.
It was the Clasico. As I said, it was good. But not mind-blowing. I ended up picking up a single bottle of the Monopole Gran Cru, more out of lack of options than anything else. There are slim pickings for those interested in high quality Rioja whites. This is at least another option, and soon I’ll be able to say if it’s a good option or not.
Off the top of my head, Abel Mendoza makes a range of very interesting white Riojas. I think those are definitely worth exploring.
Also, not sure if it’s distributed in the US, but Bhilar makes an entry-level that was quite interesting (slightly “natural”, but not overly so, though I haven’t tasted since 2018, so no idea if that has changed). Their top bottling, Finca Revilla, is a very serious wine and worth a shot if you don’t mind the exaggerated price tag (just under the 100EUR mark here in the EU). Everything in between is druidic orange soup.
Of course, none of these are “like” LdH, but then I wonder if anything else really is.
Ygay’s Capellania can also be very good, and Telmo Rodriguez’s white can be fantastic, but I think the stylistic blueprint there is more Burgundy than LdH…
On a side note, this is all to some extent very subjective, but, strangely enough, I think possibly the only wine in recent years that on some level brought a distant echo of LdH was a vintage (I forget which exactly) of Suertes del Marques Vidonia from Tenerife. I have a vague sensation that at least some of the whites currently being made in the Canary Islands might, despite a lot of obvious differences, prove to be a bit closer to that spirit than most actual white Rioja these days. I have some stashed away. We’ll see in about ten years, I guess .
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