Winemaker Notes
This wine's versatility allows us to savour its personality and character with classics such as roast lamb or pork and gamey stews. But it also blends masterfully with mushrooms, truffles, black chocolate, nuts, cream-based or spicy dishes etc.
Blend: 85% Tempranillo, 15% Cabernet Sauvignon
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Smoky, toasty oak aromas are dominant on a black-fruit bouquet that also shows graphite. This is saturated and tight, with complexity and outright deliciousness of savory, meaty, spicy blackberry flavors. Toast, cured beef and cocoa flavors prove that there's more to this than just heft and oak. Best from 2019 through 2032. Cellar Selection.
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Wine Spectator
Firm and focused, this solid red delivers black cherry, tobacco and cola flavors over firm tannins, with balsamic acidity and a spicy finish. Not a showy wine, but fresh and harmonious. Drink now through 2022. 8,500 cases made.
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James Suckling
Extremely aromatic and beautiful with currants, raspberries, and plums. Hints of flowers too. Full body, firm and silky tannins, and a fresh and bright finish. Made from old vines of 85% tempranillo and 15% other varieties.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Smoky bacon and barbecued meat aromas are quite prominent in the 2009 Reserva Selección de la Familia. It is slightly more modern and oaky than the regular Reserva offering a sinewy palate where I found a ton of grainy tannins that would require time in bottle and/or powerful food, as the fruit might dry out before the tannins get balanced. Only time will tell. Rating: 90?
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.