Winemaker Notes
Rich ruby red with a tawny rim. On the nose it is intense with notes of Oriental spices, violets, incense and secondary fruit aromas. In the mouth it is silky and elegant with great refinement. The back-taste is long and persistent.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Lastly, the 2016 Gran Reserva is gorgeous, offering a pure cassis, leather, leafy herb, and graphite-driven perfume as well as a rounded, layered, seamless style on the palate that offers tons to love. It's still structured and will evolve for another 15-20 years with ease.
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Wine Enthusiast
Inky ruby to the eye, this wine has a bouquet of black cherry, cassis, thyme and lavender. It is spicy at first sip, with plush tannins and flavors of anisette, clove, fruits of the wood and chocolate with a touch of mint. As tannins and spice peel away, brighter fruit notes appear on the palate and head into the enduring finish. Jorge Ordóñez Selections.
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James Suckling
Complex nose with a creamy overlay of walnuts, pine needles and sweet spices on top of the black cherries and blackberries. Full-bodied and intense with powerful, compact tannin that wraps up the fleshy black fruit. Quite long and tight. Better after 2024.
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Wine Spectator
Dark but fresh, with graphite and milled pepper notes winding through fruit flavors of black plum reduction, blackberry and black currant underscored by a streak of tar and mineral. The rich, herb- and spice-laced profile of this medium- to full-bodied red is finely meshed with lightly chalky tannins. Drink now through 2030. 750 cases made, 450 cases imported.
The name Ramírez de la Piscina traces its lineage back to the Navarra Kings who fought in the First Crusade during the 11th century. In early 1945, Julio Ramírez de la Piscina, followed the tradition inherited from his parents in Ábalos, and continued cultivating the family vineyards in San Vicente de la Sonsierra and began producing traditional Rioja wines. In 1961, Julio moved to Bilbao with his wife Angela and began selling his wine in the old Bodeguilla Riojana in the Plaza del Corazón de María.
In 1973, Bodegas Ramírez was officially founded and began to sell bottled wine under this name. In 1980, the fourth generation of the Ramírez de la Piscina family took over management of the winery, and in 1987, the name was changed to Bodegas Ramírez de la Piscina. The name change honors the family's historic surname, which is an ancient aristocratic Medieval Riojan name, originating from a 12th Century Romanesque church nearby the vineyards called Santa María de la Piscina.
All of the vineyards are estate owned and the vast majority of the plantings are Tempranillo on high density trellis. The oldest Tempranillo vineyards are head trained, and the family owns a few small plants of Garnacha, Viura, and Malvasia, that are used for the Rosado and Blanco. Ramirez de la Piscina champions the tradition of ageing classified, traditional styled Rioja.
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.