Winemaker Notes
Expressive and complex on the nose with flowers, berries, cured meat, spices and minerals. Fresh and elegant on the palate with refined tannins.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Wild herbs and tangy white-pepper notes on top of the fresh-toned red and black cherries, plums and hints of citrus zest, sweet red berries and minerals. Polished, dusty tannins spread evenly across the medium-bodied palate, with juicy, vivid plums and berries. Nothing showy here, but it’s beautifully balanced and understated, showing real fruit vibrancy and harmony. Drinkable now, but will hold well, too.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
When tasted next to the 2020, the 2019 Lanzaga comes through as a little more closed and austere, with a little less alcohol (14% vs 14.5%) and with rounder tannins. It comes from 15 to 20 hectares of their own organically farmed vineyards. It fermented in concrete with indigenous yeasts and matured in 225-liter barrels and 1,500- and 2,500-liter oak foudres for 14 months.
Rating: 94+
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.