Winemaker Notes
Aroma: Complex combination of ripe fruit and well integrated oak.
Taste: Rich and smooth with great length and finesse.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2005 Especial Reserva was sourced from a single vineyard with vines over 60 years of age. It spent 24 months in French oak. Deep purple-colored, it sports an alluring bouquet of sandalwood, incense, Asian spices, violets, black cherry, and blackberry compote. Structured on the palate with dense, savory, ripe fruit, it manages to remain elegant in combination with its power. Allow 2-3 years of additional cellaring and drink it from 2013 to 2025.
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.