Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
El Pison is a 100% Tempranillo cuvee produced from a single vineyard planted in 1945. The soil is pure limestone, yields are a lowly 18-22 hectoliters per hectare, and the wine is aged for 18-24 months in French oak. The rich, profound 2000 El Pison boasts a dense ruby/purple color as well as full body, tremendous precision, and layers of sweet strawberry, cherry, raspberry, and black currant fruit intermixed with mineral, subtle wood, and flower notes.
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.