Winemaker Notes
Serve with cold starters, pasta and cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2008 Crianza is aged for 12 months in American and French oak. The nose is rather subdued despite rigorous coaxing: introverted black fruit with tertiary aromas that I would like to have seen more of. The palate is nicely balanced with slightly chewy, broad-shouldered tannins and a bold, grippy finish that is brutish at the moment. A few months bottle age will do this keenly priced Crianza no harm. Drink 2013-2017.
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.