Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Vibrant and driven nose with lots of plums, cherries, chalk, white pepper and a smoky and minerally streak. Juicy and lively, with a tight claw of chalky tannins that clutches the rich, lightly sweet fruit. Drink now or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The new 2022 Anza San Ginés was produced with the complex field blend (including around 12% white grapes this year) from a plot in the Barranco de San Ginés in the village of Laguardia. It matured in two 500-liter oak barrels. It has the house style of cleanliness and precision, elegance and purity, but the quality of the tannins is not the same as in the 2021s. There is a little rusticity in the mouthfeel here, but the wine is young and should get polished with some more time in bottle. It's a very good debut, especially in a warm and dry year like 2022.
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Wine Spectator
Shows tension and drive, with a zesty skein of milled pepper, cumin and graphite animating chopped blackberry, plum skin and mountain herb notes, plus minerally stone and smoke accents. Chalky tannins offer a firm frame that's aligned with the flavor profile as this expands through the lingering finish. Best from 2027 through 2037.
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.