1996 Crianza (Rioja)

When I last visited this bodega in '94, Sierra Cantabria was producing soft, easygoing, somewhat rustic wines of steadily increasing concentration. Since that time the winery, owned by the Eguren family, has taken it to another level: today estate-bottled Riojas are altogether more serious wines, with no loss of their enticing fruitiness. Wines bottled under the Sierra Cantabria label are from the family's 120 hectares of vines in Laguardia and Labastida (purchased fruit is used for the carbonic maceration Codice line). Maceration times are longer than they were at the beginning of the '80s, with the wines spending up to two full weeks on their skins after the fermentation ends. The wines are aged in a combination of French and American oak (the barrels are rotated on a three-year cycle), in a deep, cool, spotless arched barrel cellar constructed in 1995. x000D x000D x000D x000D The Senorio de San Vicente wines (see "Other Recommended Riojas"), from 18 hectares of small-berried tempranillo peludo under the same ownership as Sierra Cantabria, offer complexity and opulent texture that belie the youth of the vines, which were planted in 1985. These new-wave Riojas get a full month on their skins, go through malolactic fermentation in all-new barrels (40% French and 60% American in '97), and are bottled after 20 months in barrel. x000D x000D x000D x000D One final note: I had a chance to taste a barrel sample of the 1998 Vega de Toro Numanthia, made by the Egurens from very old ungrafted vines (some predate phylloxera) planted on chalk and clay soil and yielding less than 10 hectoliters per hectare. This ruby-blue wine, aged in all new French oak, had a knockout nose of inky blackberry, violet, minerals and tarry oak; dense, penetrating flavors of superb intensity and clarity; and a solid acid and tannin structure for medium-term aging. Of the numerous new wines I've sampled from the Toro region-Spain's next great source of serious tempranillo-this was one of the best. I scored the sample 90-93