Winemaker Notes
Macán Clásico is a wine more attached to the territory. Freshness, fruitiness and delicacy are its hallmarks. Its elaboration takes place in stainless steel tanks, with a part of malolactic fermentation in oak, and a barrel aging that ranges between 12 and 14 months depending on the characteristics of the vintage.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This dark garnet-colored wine has a nose of black currant, raspberry and milk chocolate. Deep fruit flavors of cassis and dark plums fill the mouth, joined by notes of cocoa powder, tobacco leaf and espresso bean. Fleecy tannins dissipate into a lingering, fruit-filled finish. Drink now
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James Suckling
Aromas of blackberries and crushed stones with some black licorice and violets, following through to a medium body with a solid core of fruit and such attractive fruit and fine tannins at the finish. Really attractive now.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Their second wine in the Bordeaux sense is the 2018 Macán Clásico, which in the cooler and late year (they picked between October 2nd and 14th) fermented in stainless steel and matured in 50% new French oak barrels, 10% American oak barrel and 40% used ones for 12 months. The wine has moderate ripeness and alcohol (14%) in a fresher, subtler and more elegant year with good freshness (a pH of 3.75) and balance. It's young and creamy, a baby that will improve as it burns down that fat. Separating the press wine by quality and aging it separately seems to have increased the precision. It has to be one of the finest vintages for this wine; it is round and nicely textured.
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Decanter
A rainy year in Rioja and an abundant harvest. Tempranillo cherry is overlaid with fine cedar and spice, plus firm tannin, with crispness that comes bursting through. Elegant and very long, with a lighter style. With Macán Classico, winemaker Gonzalo Iturriaga is working towards less extraction and in 2017 began to work with gentler pressing. Aged for 12 months in barrique, 50% new (40% French and 10% American), and 50% one year old.
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Wine Spectator
A balanced red, medium-bodied and lightly juicy, with supple tannins buoying ripe black raspberry and red licorice notes and savory accents of tobacco and tar. Chewy. Drink now through 2025. 12,818 cases made, 1,417 cases imported.
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.