"The 2023 Rioja Blanco from Migel Merino is an old vine wine made from a blend of seventy percent Viura and thirty percent Garnacha Blanca. The Garnacha Blanca hails from a vineyard called La Loma planted in 1JG:946. The Viura vines are not as old, hailing from a vineyard called Mingortiz, planted on very gravelly soils. The wine is barrel-fermented and raised for ten months in five hundred liter demi-muids. The 2023 version comes in at an even fourteen percent octane and offers up a deep and utterly classic bouquet of lemon, pear, raw almond, salty soil tones, a touch of bergamot and a lovely framing of vanillin oak. On the palate the wine is deep, young, racy and full-bodied, with a superb core of fruit, excellent soil undertow and grip, fine focus and balance and a long, youthfully complex and nicely snappy finish that closes with a note of citrus peel. This is an excellent bottle of Rioja Blanca that is still too young for primetime drinking and really deserves another three or four years in the cellar before broaching. But, it will be excellent in due course. 2030-2065+. "