Winemaker Notes
Minty, with sweet and acid fruits. Pure, svelte, clean. The texture of fine thread, sinuous, with a long caress.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Such depth and natural concentration with a bit more tar and wet stones. Floral, too, with some lavender and violets to the deep, fresh blueberries. Melted, fibrous tannins tightly envelope the palate, rendering a mealy and silky mouthfeel before a persistent finish. Really long and elegant. Lasting a minute.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
I was looking forward to the bottled version of the 2020 San Lázaro, my favorite of the "new" single-vineyard bottlings from a plot that previously contributed to the Pagos Viejos. The sample I tasted last time showed big bones and a slim structure, an ethereal wine that was long and floral, spicy and fresh. In 2020, they used a little bit of white grapes, and there's even more in 2021, when they decided to systematically use 2% to 4% of white grapes in the vineyards where the grapes are interplanted with the Tempranillo. This wine has finesse and is slender and delicate, with something ethereal about it, quite open and a little more advanced, with some unexpected toasty notes. Here, the majority of barrels were 500-liter ones (three 500-liter and two 225-liter barrels).
Rating: 95+
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.