Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
The aromas to this are so complete and complex with smoked meat, dark berries, walnuts, spice and black tea. Full body, very deep and dark fruit with intense dark chocolate on the finish. Pure. Electric tannins and always polished. Drink after 2022.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Even if some compare it with El Pisón, the 2016 El Carretil doesn't quite reach the same heights, even though Carretil has to be one of their best plots, a limestone-rich vineyard at 500 meters in altitude in the village of Laguardia. The vineyard is further north and therefore a cooler place, even if it mainly faces south. This wine comes from three different parcels planted at different times (80 years, 50 years and 40 years ago), averaging maybe 50 years. This is always very mineral, with up to 17% limestone (the other soils have maybe 10%), and elegant, incisive and lively, with great tannins and lots of energy. The process is similar or the same for all the wines, so they try to express the differences provided by each place. And this has to be one of their best places.
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Wine Spectator
Rich and bold, this big red delivers currant, blackberry, licorice, espresso and loamy earth flavors in a dense texture, with well-integrated tannins and balsamic acidity. Deep and seamless, in the modern style. Drink now through 2032.
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.