Winemaker Notes
Aged in handcrafted French and American oak casks for 26 months. The wine was then rounded off in the bottle for at least 36 months before it was released. Both ageing techniques granting this wine Gran Reserva status and the highest Rioja quality.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Dry, leafy aromas of tobacco, herbs, wood smoke, raspberry and cherry are classic Rioja. This has a mature, smooth, silky feel to it, although acidity is present and accounted for. Flavors of spiced tomato, vanilla, berry, brine and tobacco finish earthy and loamy. Drink through 2019.
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Wine & Spirits
A clean, vigorous and bright 2007, this wine has a classical finesse. The zesty fruit leans toward roasted tomato flavors, wrapped up in fine tannins to produce a tangy bitterness that wants food. It would be delicious with a salad of duck confit.
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.