Winemaker Notes
This powerful wine with aromatic herbs (thyme, rosemary, lavender and fennel) in the nose and full-bodied concentrated black fruit on the palate. Contador illustrates Benjamin’s philosophy of “Lento y Fuerte”: measured and forceful.
Blend: 94% Tempranillo, 3% Graciano, 3% Mazuelo
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Contador was produced with Tempranillo from seven vineyards—El Bombón, El Cerezo, Bardallo, El Bosque, Vizcarra, La Tejera and La Nava—in the villages of San Vicente de la Sonsierra and Ábalos. The grapes were picked between September 28 and October 9; it fermented destemmed in oak vats and matured in new French oak barrels for 20 months. It's a powerful wine at 15.13% alcohol and a pH of 3.61, with generous oak and a creamy twist, ripe, concentrated and with abundant, fine-grained tannins. It's medium to full-bodied with balance and a long, dry, chalky finish. It needs a little more time but should make a long-lived Contador. Benjamín Romeo thinks this could be reminiscent of 2005 and 2010.
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.