Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
With good argument, Artadi could well be considered the most exciting enterprise in Rioja. This wine is spectacular, but there are only 350 cases. The wine is 100% Tempranillo grown at high altitudes, raised in French oak, and bottled without filtration. There is an extraordinary elegance and purity, as well as remarkable intensity and symmetry.
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.