Winemaker Notes
Blend: 95% Tempranillo, 5% Graciano
Professional Ratings
-
Jeb Dunnuck
Also terrific, the 2013 Rioja Reserva offers a deeper, slightly more powerful style as well as classic notes of ripe red and black fruits, cedarwood, vanilla, and spice. Full-bodied, concentrated, and beautifully balanced, it’s another smoking good wine from this estate that’s going to evolve gracefully for over a decade. This cuvée is 95% Tempranillo and 5% Graciano, all aged 18 months in 70% French oak and 30% American oak.
-
Decanter
Lovely aromas of sweet cherries and strawberries with vanilla and toasty notes. Smooth palate with a great juicy concentration.
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.