Winemaker Notes
This wine will pair nicely with game animals, legume, stews and grilled red meats. Chef's suggestion: traditional lamb stew.
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
Rounded and layered aromas of dried fruits, red cherry, smoke and coconut. Well polished and presented with red fruit and plum flavours sluicing through the palate. It is, simply, a beautiful wine with the X-factor.
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James Suckling
Tight and linear with crushed-berry, violet and new-wood aromas and flavors. Medium body. A little hard, but racy and intense. Drink now or hold.
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.