Winemaker Notes
Tabuérniga is a small, vertical and isolated valley, where shorter vegetative cycle varieties offer a different expression and give rise to a sober and austere wine, but full of depth and elegance.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This shows a solid core of fruit with such purity, offering blackberries, black cherries and dark chocolate (subtle). Full-bodied, but really refined and tight with precision and length. Incredibly deep and long. Energetic. Mostly tempranillo.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Tabuerniga is from one of the most beautiful vineyards in Rioja, a terraced place that is located at 540 to 630 meters in altitude and is farmed organically. It fermented in open-top oak vats with indigenous yeasts and matured in 1,500-liter oak foudres for 14 to 16 months following the most strict tradition. The wine is superb, subtle, elegant and refined, still a little young and closed but with a sense of harmony, depth and seriousness that puts it among the finest vintages for this wine. The palate is lively and vibrant, with purity and harmony; it's delineated, symmetric and seamless, with a silky palate. This is simply superb and develops further complexity with time in the glass, flowers a touch of meat and blood. This is my go-to wine from the single-vineyard bottlings.
Rating: 98+
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.