Winemaker Notes
This vineyard gives "thick stroke" wines. Artadi feels the presence of volume and the intense flavors of very ripe fruit. Broad, round and dense tannins, typical from a vineyard with character.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Here comes another tight and powerful plot wine from Artadi with a bit of dark chocolate and warm stones to the wild herbs, slightly baked plums, mulberries and blackberries. Intense and so dense with tight, quite tough tannins. There is real potential here. Tempranillo. From organically grown grapes. Drink from 2026.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 La Poza de Ballesteros is a powerful and ripe wine with 14.66% alcohol and ripe fruit, volume and round and dense tannins. The exposition to the afternoon sun and the deeper soils of this 1.18-hectare plot of vines planted in 1960 on deep brown soils give the grapes more ripeness, and this wine is always a riper expression of Tempranillo. It has notes of black fruit and tobacco, and it's round and generous, more voluptuous, with round tannins and instant gratification. It's expressive and direct, quite gentle.Best After 2022
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.