Winemaker Notes
This is a spectacular setting from a single plot in the foothills of Sierra Cantabria, where the vines absorb the nutrients of the calcareous clay soil with disintegrated mountain rock fragments and breathe the Atlantic climate of the area.
Blend: 75% Tempranillo, 25% Graciano
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The single-vineyard 2015 K4 was sourced from a plot planted in Ábalos in 1950 at 660 meters in altitude. It's mostly Tempranillo with 12% Graciano aged in 600-liter foudres for 12 months. This is a darker, more powerful red, with some spicy and smoky aromas, hints of coal and licorice. This is a vineyard that did not suffer from hail in 2015, so it was harvested later than the ones that did. The palate is a lot lighter, finer and more elegant than expected, with sharp acidity and fine-grained, slightly dusty tannins.
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.