Winemaker Notes
Deep picota cherry red with an intense ruby rim. Intense and elegant. Floral notes and red fruit which blend with sweet spices (vanilla) and roasted coffee. A long lingering finish with the balance of great Riojas.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Supple and fruity with cherries, red berries, blueberries, chestnuts and undergrowth. Medium-bodied with finely grained tannins. Layered, structured and balanced with a juicy finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Viña Pomal Reserva was selected from the 90 hectares of the vineyard and produced in a traditional way, fermenting the destemmed grapes with a longish maceration and aging the wine in American oak barrels, 20% of them new, for 18 months. 2017 was not an easy year and was marked by severe frost that resulted in warm wines with higher alcohol. It was not an easy vintage but has produced some good wines, and it suits the more developed and polished traditional style of this wine. It's aromatic, with notes of sweet spices and abundant, fine tannins.
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.