Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
This plush red delivers lively flavors of boysenberry, pomegranate, tangerine and cocoa, supported by firm tannins and bright acidity. Expressive and balanced, in the modern style. Drink now through 2030.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Very smoky and dark with notes of black fruit and licorice, the 2015 El Regalo, pure Tempranillo, was also very oaky in an end-of-the-1990s style. The palate is also very spicy with oak-related flavors and could do with some more fruit (or less oak). For fans of oaky reds.
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.