Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The flagship 2005 Aro is composed of 70% Tempranillo and 30% Graciano sourced from Muga’s best and oldest vineyards. It is then aged for 18 months in new French oak. Purple/black in color, the wine’s legs ooze slowly down the glass. Aromas of toasty new oak, mineral, spice box, incense, and blackberry are followed by a muscular, backstrapping infant of a wine with huge fruit, flavor, and structure. Deep, layered, and nearly impenetrable, it will require a minimum of a decade of cellaring. Do not think of touching a bottle before 2015 and then enjoy it through 2030. It is a true vin de garde.
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Wine Spectator
This muscular red leads with oaky notes of smoke, coffee and dark chocolate that frame a rich core of plum, tobacco and savory herbs. There's powerful tannins, but the finish is clean and fresh. Let this unwind. Best after 2010. Tasted twice, with consistent notes. 250 cases made.
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.