Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
A full, ripe and generous Tempranillo, with rich aromas of prune and blackberry offset by balsamic notes and tobacco. It feels lush and smooth, with concentrated flavors of roasted berry, coffee, chocolate and tobacco. Huge and lasting on the finish, has subtle tannins and complexity.
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Wine Spectator
Blackberry and plum flavors are ripe and rich in this polished red. Smoke, leaf and licorice notes keep this focused, while chewy tannins give structure. Big, yet graceful.
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.