Winemaker Notes
Intense ruby red color, medium-high intensity, clean and bright. Intense and complex nose with hints of red fruits (redcurrant, wild strawberries), forest floor notes and fresh pastry, chocolate, ground coffee and white pepper aromas. Smooth texture, balance and elegant freshness on the palate, with ripe red fruit and spicy nuances returning.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 Finca San Martín is a varietal Tempranillo from the younger vines. It fermented in stainless steel and matured in 60% American oak barrels and 40% second-use French oak barrels for 16 months, during which time it was racked three times. It's a typical modern red from Rioja Alavesa with the depth and completeness of the year. It's fleshy and fruit driven, ripe without excess at 14.5% alcohol, with very good freshness and balancing acidity, glossy tannins and a gentle mouthfeel. The wine has less impact from the oak and shows more of the vineyard and the zone.
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James Suckling
Elegant vanilla, spices, red and black plums, red cherries and a smoky touch. Very fine-grained, creamy tannins. Quite a long, pleasurable Rioja crianza that’s appealing now.
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Vinous
The 2021 Crianza Finca San Martín from Rioja Alavesa aged for one year in French and American oak. A rich garnet-purple in hue, it offers aromas of raspberry, cherry and mild forest floor notes along with caramel and dulce de leche from the oak. Fruity and expressive with a delicate red-fruit-driven palate and gentle grip, this is a precise, appealing Rioja.
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Wine Spectator
A fresh and inviting red, with a lovely beam of ripe cherry fruit layered with fine, lightly chalky tannins and a pretty range of violet, thyme and licorice root notes. Minerally hints of graphite and iron show on the finish. Drink now through 2035. 20,833 cases made.
Torre de Ona was forged in 1995, when La Rioja Alta, S.A. led this exciting project with the aim of making an excellent quality wine incorporating all the personality of the best vine plots in the prestigious Rioja Alavesa area. A unique location that they were convinced provided clear potential for making a great modern wine, capable of transmitting – as with the great "chateaux" – the exclusive characteristics of a privileged estate.
Since then, and always focused on the continual improvement in the wine, Torre de Ona has made important changes to the vineyards and winery. But it has been in recent years, more specifically since 2005, that they started to pay very special attention to the different plots that make up the estate, and the separate production and maturing of each sub-plot, evaluating the soil and determining where the best quality grapes grow, only then collecting harvests that meet the quality standards for an important international wine. This is how they made the Torre de Ona, Finca San Martín and Club de Cosecheros (Harvester's Club) wines.
They have taken a big step forward. But they will not rest there. They constantly strive for excellence and are convinced that for the Torre de Ona winery, the best has yet to come.
Hailed as the star red variety in Spain’s most celebrated wine region, Tempranillo from Rioja, or simply labeled, “Rioja,” produces elegant wines with complex notes of red and black fruit, crushed rock, leather, toast and tobacco, whose best examples are fully capable of decades of improvement in the cellar.
Rioja wines are typically a blend of fruit from its three sub-regions: Rioja Alta, Rioja Alavesa and Rioja Oriental, although specific sub-region (zonas), village (municipios) and vineyard (viñedo singular) wines can now be labeled. Rioja Alta and Alavesa, at the highest elevations, are considered to be the source of the brightest, most elegant fruit, while grapes from the warmer and drier, Rioja Oriental, produce wines with deep color, great body and richness.