Winemaker Notes
From a sensorial point of view, Monte Real Crianza follows a modern style of wine: more color, more fruit and more potency. Intense color, delicate fresh aromas that maintain the fruitiness and expression of the grape variety and the terroir, beautifully blending with ageing notes in harmony and balance. In the mouth, its body and potency are perfectly offset by the smoothness and elegance typical of great Riojas.
Pair this wine alongside meat dishes or a tapas offering.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A very ripe and rich red with dried berry, chocolate and vanilla with some toasted coffee bean. It’s full and flavorful with lots going on. Layered and intense. This is impressive now, but even better in a year or two.
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Wine Enthusiast
A blackish-purple color and forceful oak that lends a chocolaty, tarry, smoky topping to the nose open this bold but balanced crianza. Blackberry, tobacco, black tea and oak flavors are strong and heady. Prune and woodspice notes dominate the finish.
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Wine Spectator
A smooth texture masks good concentration in this juicy red, with a firm structure. Ripe cherry and plum flavors mingle with coffee and toasty notes, showing touches of herb and loamy earth.
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.