Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Plenty of earth, spice, meat and dark-berry aromas follow through to a medium-to full-bodied palate with dusty tannins and blue fruit. It’s flavorful and balanced. From organically grown grapes. Drink now or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
I had not tasted the unbottled 2018 La Poza de Ballesteros, so I tasted it from bottle. The vineyard is 1.18 hectares that were planted in 1960 on brown clay and silt soils that are quite deep. It matured in barrique for nine months. This is particularly fine and elegant in 2018, it has contained ripeness, there is no excess ripeness or heat and it's cool and balanced. It has the roundness of the place and the edge of the vintage, coming through as elegant and balanced like I have never seen before in this wine. It's fresh, even minty; perhaps it doesn't have the depth and definition as the others where the finesse comes naturally, but this has to be the finest Poza I have tried.
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.