Winemaker Notes
Ruby with red hues, the wine showcases elegant aromas of spice and tobacco leaf. Unctuous, silky and round on the palate, its spicy ripe berry complexity adds elegance and a savory maturity to its long finish.
Professional Ratings
-
Wine Spectator
This plump red offers juicy flavors of cherry, berry and orange peel, with tobacco and vanilla notes that float in a silky texture over light tannins. Delicate and elegant. Drink now through 2020. 1,100 cases imported.
-
Tasting Panel
Smooth and juicy with spice and mature plum; silky and bright with lovely balance and notes of earth and spice; long and deep.
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.