Marques de Caceres Rioja Gaudium 2020 SF Chronicle and honestly better with a

and honestly better with a few years in the cellar

A contemplative journey from bold fruit to dry heat

from a house that knows the region as well as anyone

with sweet tannins that frame rather than clobber

Marques de Caceres Rioja Gaudium 2020 SF Chronicle and honestly better with aThis is the bottle Marques de Caceres makes when it wants to prove a point. Gaudium (Latin for joy) comes from tiny old vine plots scattered across Rioja Alta and the high terraces of Rioja Alavesa, some vines over seventy years old and a few pre phylloxera survivors past a century. Yields are brutal by design, under a kilo of fruit per plant, and the grapes are hand picked in small boxes and sorted cluster by cluster before native yeast fermentation