Winemaker Notes
Intense ruby color, with a bright, clean pink rim. Powerful fruit on the nose with an initial surge of wild strawberries, raspberries and blackberries, opening up to delicate spicy, peppery notes, cedar wood, licorice and pastry. The palate is vibrant and elegant, expressing the terroir with freshness and intensity. Pleasant and long with a fleshy finish and hints of red fruit and spices.
With its structure and elegance, it is ideal with food. This is a wine that invites you to drink and is a good accompaniment to stewed and roasted meats, as well as game and cured charcuterie.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Finca Martelo comes from property planted with a blend of 95% Tempranillo and 5% Mazuelo, Garnacha and Viura at 630 meters in altitude that they only bottle in very good or excellent years. The 2019 was picked starting October 15th, and the destemmed grapes were put through optical sorting, a five-day cold soak and then fermented in stainless steel and went through malolactic in new French and American oak barrels. The élevage was in 80% American and 20% French oak barrels and lasted for two years, during which time it was racked four times. 2019 feels like a very complete harvest for Martelo; the wine is very harmonious and balanced, with power and freshness, intensity and persistence. The palate is surprisingly fresh, medium-bodied and fine-boned, clean and elegant.
Rating: 94+ -
James Suckling
Scented and expressive nose with fresh cherries, plums, strawberries, stones, mussels and fine sweet spices. Fresh, juicy and medium-bodied on the palate with chalky tannins and a long, linear finish. 95% tempranillo and 5% mazuelo, garnacha and viura. Very drinkable.
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Wine Spectator
Toast and vanilla accents join flavors of cherry preserves and roasted plum, plus cured tobacco, mineral and spice hints. Chewy, well-integrated tannins work alongside the tang of orange peel acidity to structure this polished red.
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.