Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2012 Bodegas Lan Rioja Gran Reserva is an excellent example of Rioja. TASTING NOTES: This wine excels with aromas and flavors of rich black fruit, enticing savory spices, and well-appointed oaky notes. Try it with a rare slice of prime rib. (Tasted: February 14, 2022, San Francisco, CA)
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Wine Spectator
This graceful red offers density and freshness, with the smooth texture carrying cherry, dried currant, licorice, tea and citrus peel flavors. The tannins are well-integrated, with bright acidity. Graceful. Tempranillo and Graciano. Drink now through 2032.
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.