Winemaker Notes
This wine is cherry red in color. The nose and palate are highly complex with notes of compote fruit punctuated by toasted spice notes and minerals from aging in high quality oak. The elegance found on the palate is the result of balanced acidity, astringency, and aromatic power, which contributes to a long and elegant finish.
This wine is the perfect accompaniment to red meats, game, Iberian ham, and cured cheeses. This wine can be enjoyed now, or can be kept for years to come.
Professional Ratings
-
James Suckling
There’s a spicy overlay to the tangy white pepper, savory spices, dried plums, dried grapefruit and licorice notes. Pretty complex and well balanced, with linear savory fruit and a lengthy finish. Very firm and fine-boned tannins.
-
Decanter
Liquorice, herbs and blackcurrant from start to finish, all wrapped in charming creamy oak. Harmonious, vibrant, smooth and charming.
-
Wine Spectator
A savory red, leading with smoke and grilled herb notes before revealing flavors of plumped cherry and baked plum. Well-balanced, with supple tannins and fragrant accents of sassafras root, cocoa powder and macchia emerging on the finish. Tempranillo and Graciano. Drink now through 2030.
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.