Winemaker Notes
Clean and bright black cherry red color with deep aromas of red berries and subtle blackberry notes. Fresh and complex. Harmonious and multi-layered. A robust red with fine, well polished tannins, very well balanced and integrated.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Now here’s a Rioja where the wood hasn’t been dialed up, and it’s all the better for it. It’s an idiosyncratic wine with heather, forest floor, blackberries and cumin and cinnamon. Full-bodied and very focused on the center palate, it trades in medium-chewy tannins and a spicy finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
I was speculating whether 2016 could be a modern version of 2010 even though the climate pattern was quite different, and when tasting the 2016 Finca Valdepoleo with Carlos San Pedro, he told me he wasn't very happy with his 2010s and that he preferred the 2007s. There is great finesse and elegance here, in the winery's modern style with a lively palate and great acidity. This is produced with grapes from a vineyard planted in the 1970s that is almost 15 hectares, and it basically goes to this wine. The vineyard is vinified in seven different plots, and since 2013, when they harvested early and did a softer vinification, it has gained in precision; in a way, this 2016 could be the modern version of that 2013. It has very fine tannins, nicely integrated oak and a tasty, almost salty finish that makes you salivate. A great Valdepoleo. Rating: 93+
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.