If you love the pleasures of traditional Rioja, you may be as charmed by this wine as I am. It's not flashy or insistent. In fact, it's sort of homely in its simplicity, more about delicacy and finesse than complexity. This starts out on tight red berry scents, builds tension with cool acidity, then adds depth with gentle sweetness, so the wine feels both firm and lush. Kudos to CVNE for one of the most compellingly drinkable 2012s you can find. Staff Pick

Brilliant ruby. Energetic, mineral-accented raspberry and cherry aromas reveal hints of rose, vanilla and woodsmoke. Silky and expansive on entry, offering nicely concentrated red fruit flavors that gain energy and a smoky mineral quality with air. Floral pastille and cracked pepper notes linger on the juicy, focused finish, which shows very good clarity and sneaky, fine-grained tannins. Much of the juice that would normally go into the high-end Imperial bottlings wound up in here this vintage.

Fresh and focused, this red offers black cherry, plum, licorice and smoky flavors, well-balanced by light, firm tannins and crisp acidity. Graceful. Drink now through 2021.

The 2013 Cune Reserva benefits from the fact that most of the top wines will not be bottled in that challenging vintage and therefore, many of the wines that usually go to Imperial are probably in this blend. This is fresh and has red fruit freshness, a light-styled palate and very fine tannins. This is a red for the short term. Some 500,000 bottles were produced in this cool vintage.