2016 Bodegas Pastor Diaz Castroviejo Gran Reserva Rioja DOCa

Here's the trick most people miss with Rioja: the Gran Reserva tier does the waiting for you.

Bodegas Pastor Díaz sits in Aldeanueva de Ebro, in Rioja Oriental, at the eastern end of the appellation. The Gonzalo Pastor family founded the bodega in 1994, but they had been growing grapes here for more than a century before that, quietly selecting the best plots one generation at a time.

Today they farm over 100 hectares, most of it on the foothills of Mount Yerga, some of the most sought-after vineyard land in Rioja.

The Castroviejo wines come off those slopes: deep, pebbly, chalk-and-clay soil that keeps yields low and concentration high. Fruit is picked at night so it arrives at the winery cold.

The Gran Reserva is drawn from the oldest vines the family owns on the Las Planas estate, then given 27 months in fine-grained American and French oak and another 36 months resting in bottle before a case is allowed to leave.

Sixty three months of aging, on the winery's clock. That is what a Gran Reserva was supposed to be, and this family still builds it that way.

In the glass it's classic Rioja: Tempranillo-led, rounded out with Graciano and a touch of Mazuelo. Ripe dark fruit folded into coconut, vanilla, sweet spice and that savory tobacco-and-mineral edge only real bottle age gives you.