Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Tasting a new vintage of Las Beatas is always a special moment. The 2017 Las Beatas comes from grapes picked earlier than ever, from a year that was warm and dry, marked by frost in late April and low-yielding. Despite which, the wine is still 14% alcohol and feels delicate, floral and mysterious. It fermented in an open 3,000-liter oak vat with indigenous yeasts and matured in a 1,200-liter oak foudre for 14 to 16 months. This is always a mysterious wine, completely different and changing—"tri-dimensional," as Telmo says—and I thought about an Agatha Christie novel. As with the Tabuerniga, Las Beatas transcends the conditions of the vintage; it's nuanced and insinuating, with subtle and very elegant aromas and a textured palate with a very fine, silky thread. A lovely and delicate expression of Rioja that is full of light and energy. There is a jump in quality from Tabuerniga here. 1,501 bottles were filled in May 2019.
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.