Winemaker Notes
Opulent aromas marked black fruit, aniseed and mint notes. A long, lively, juicy wine, characterized by a deep complexity with a clear horizontal projection.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Deep yet vibrant nose with morello cherries, iodine, oyster shells, crushed stones and fine spices. Certainly nothing “sweet” here. A tight claw of fibrous tannins on the full-bodied palate. Really mineral and chalky with crumbled, fine tannins.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2020 La Poza de Ballesteros is a powerful and ripe wine with 14.66% alcohol and ripe fruit, volume and round and dense tannins. It's from a 1.18-hectare plot of vines planted in 1960 on deep brown soils, and the exposition to the afternoon sun and the deeper soils gives the grapes more ripeness—and this wine is always a riper expression of Tempranillo. It's unctuous, with contained ripeness, fresher fruit and fine, slightly dusty tannins. It's balsamic, clean and fresh with some aniseed and fennel aromas and a silky, gentle palate, with less ripe sensations than in past vintages.
Rating: 93+
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.