Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Forceful and fully oaked, with dark, rubbery, minty black fruit flavors. The palate is a bit rugged but solid as granite. Tastes toasty and roasted, with black fruit and licorice flavors front and center. Rolls along well on the finish, showing lemon zest and clove notes.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2007 Capricho de Landaluce is sourced from 80-year-old Tempranillo vines and fermented in 500-liter French oak casks for 18 months. It has a "juicy" black cherry and cassis scented nose that is modern and pure in style. The palate is medium-bodied with succulent tannins and crisp acidity. There is fine weight on the fleshy, silky finish that caresses the mouth with succulent dark plum and cassis. This is a finely made, modern Rioja that should age well. Drink 2013-2020.
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.