Winemaker Notes
Classical, refined, and red fruited with touches of anise, fennel, herb and pepper. Great elegance, incredibly fine tannin and very pure. Sweet, red cherry berry fruit, beautifully round and delicate. The tannins are sweet, the acidity is sweet, and the wine, delicate, gently briary, round, energetic-nearing-electric, tangy and savory.
Professional Ratings
-
James Suckling
Aromas of extremely pure, rich and ripe cassis and blue plums. Fresh earth notes, too. Super fleshy, lithe and juicy with an underlying graphite-like stony core and superfine tannins. Really immaculate, long and layered with red and black cherries coming through. From a 1.6-acre vineyard. Drink or hold.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2015 La Estrada is from a vineyard that used to be the backbone in the blend of the Altos de Lanzaga (not produced anymore), where the high altitude provides freshness in warm years like 2015. It has some lactic and smoky notes and is a little creamy, even if there's also a strong imprint from the chalky soils. 1,920 bottles.
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.