Winemaker Notes
Cherry red with tile edges. Clean and bright medium high robe. On the nose, ripe fruits, strawberry and hints of licorice are perceived, which open up to give a floral range and sweet spices. Pleasant, tasty mid palate, ripe tannins with a cherry presence. Long and pleasant aftertaste with hints of aging in wood.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Red-violet to the eye, this wine has aromas of raspberry, milk chocolate and black olive paste. It is juicy in the mouth on opening; then flavors of blackberry and cassis set in with notes of dark chocolate, violet and almond toffee. Plush tannins remain on the palate into a long finish.
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Wine Spectator
A pretty red, with floral and spice accents on the nose and a juicy palate of wild strawberry and cherry, licorice twist and eucalyptus. Reveals an underlying tang of iron-laced minerality, with taut tannins emerging to firm the finish. Drink now.
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.