Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This is rich, complex and assertively oaked with a ripe thread of dark and red-cherry and plum aromas that follow to the palate with a smooth, polished-tannin quality. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Even if 2012 was extremely dry and somewhat warm, the 2012 Roda I feels fresher than the 2011 I tasted next to it. 2012 was also an early harvest, up to 15 to 20 days earlier than 2010. This is more or less the same blend, mostly Tempranillo with some 4% Graciano, fermented with indigenous yeasts. The élevage was in new and second use French oak barrels and lasted for 16 months. It has a more developed and classical nose, with some hints of leather and graphite, black fruit and spices. The palate is medium to full-bodied and ripe without excess, with abundant, slightly dusty tannins. A powerful Roda I. 78,218 bottles produced. It was bottled in August 2014. 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.