Winemaker Notes
Aromas of florals, exotic spices and dark fruits. The palate is rich and structured with a seamless underlying elegance and balance.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Wonderful aromas of peaches, blackberries, mulberries, lightly smoked meat, tobacco, and spices like nutmeg, as well as iodine and graphite. Medium to full body with very racy tannins that run the length of the wine and give it structure and length. Racy and structured with intention. From organically grown grapes.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
One year ago, I tasted this as a barrel sample when it was still young and undeveloped, juicy and with plenty of baby fat. And now tasted from bottle, the 2020 Viña El Pisón has turned into a serious wine despite 2020 being a more approachable vintage with more fruit, but still has a remarkable tannic structure. It's elegant, austere and subtle, with a very long aftertaste, and the strength here is the mouthfeel. It's both powerful and ethereal, with stunning balance. They finally bottled it after the normal élevage, and the idea is to perhaps bottle it before was abandoned, as they realized what seemed like a more fragile vintage at first also benefitted from the élevage.
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.