Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The purple-colored 2008 Audius is 100% Tempranillo from vines ranging in age from 35-60 years. It was aged sur lie in French oak for 9 months. It emits an expressive nose of violets, Asian spices, leather, mineral, and blackberry. This is followed by a medium-bodied wine with a sense of elegance and a velvety texture. Concentrated, lengthy, and stylish, it is a wine of finesse for drinking over the next 8 years.
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.