Winemaker Notes
Deep garnet red with a ruby rim. On the nose, notes of very ripe fruit - plum, figs and fruit compote - stand out. All enveloped in notes of vanilla, caramel, black pepper and smoke. A well-structured wine, with ripe, sweet tannins on the palate. It has a long life ahead of it.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This is an impressive Gran Reserva. It opens with cinnamon, five spice, iodine, vanilla, resin, elderberries, cherry liqueur, blackberries and black raspberries. The palate is plush, full-bodied and very concentrated, but there’s enough depth of field to the tannins to take on the immense, dark-fruit flavors. Some cutting acidity drives this home. Drink in 2024.
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.