Winemaker Notes
Pairs perfectly with international cuisine, such as curried dishes, ceviche and spicy preparations. It also goes well with traditional foods like red meats, game and ripened cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
This fleshy red shows a traditional style, featuring dried cherry, orange peel, black tea and spicy notes that mingle over slightly chewy tannins. Lively, with enough structure for food. Drink now through 2022.
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.