Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The bottle of the 2010 Culmen Reserva looks and weighs like a magnum, but its 750ml. It's a blend of Tempranillo with 15% Graciano, showing some surprising herbal aromas in an Atlantic way, mixed with ripe black fruit, plenty of incense, cigar ash, and cedar wood aromas giving it a modern/classical profile with a Mediterranean/Atlantic feeling. The palate is medium to full-bodied with quite a lot of acidity and fine-grained, slightly astringent tannins that might require time in bottle to integrate.
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Wine Spectator
Rich and racy, this bold red delivers kirsch, macerated blackberry, licorice and espresso flavors. A generous texture is supported by firm tannins and orange peel acidity. A big, modern style that maintains balance. Drink now through 2020.
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.