Winemaker Notes
The 2020 Macán Clásico delivers a lively, vibrant, digestible, yet fun expression. Macán Clásico is gradually asserting its own style.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2020 Macán Clásico was cropped from a more generous crop. The grapes were put in a cold chamber for one night and then underwent a cold soak of three to four days, after which they inoculated the yeasts—in 2020, 25% of it was their native yeast. It fermented in stainless steel, and the élevage was 45% in new French and 5% new American oak barrels, 28% in second use barrel and 22% in stainless steel for one year. The bottled wine has 14% alcohol, a pH of 3.78 and 4.5 grams of acidity (tartaric). This is one of the most elegant vintages of this bottling so far. It has showy aromatics with notes of smoky bacon, a bit meaty, and the thing that surprised me the most was the velvety texture.
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James Suckling
Black olives and a hint of black bean puree to the fresh black cherries, damsons and a hint of mint. Refined, medium-bodied palate with fine, fresh tannins that are present but not grainy. Really elegant and long. Drinkable now, but will develop well in the next six to seven years.
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Wine Spectator
Fine-grained, creamy tannins are well-meshed with juicy black cherry and mulberry fruit, rooibos tea leaf, red licorice, cocoa powder and fresh earth flavors in this supple, silky red. Drink now through 2030.
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.