Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This shows spices, dark berries, violets, cedar, underbrush and a hint of licorice on the nose. Medium- to full-bodied, it offers tender dark fruit with an expansive and voluminous profile, combining depth and density on the balanced palate. The tannins are polished and well integrated. 92% tempranillo and 8% graciano. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The flagship 2020 Roda I has a nose of black fruit and spices with hints of licorice and aromatic herbs, with depth and complexity, still very young and undeveloped. It's mostly Tempranillo and 8% Graciano fermented with indigenous yeasts and matured in French oak barrels, half of them new, for 16 months. It reveals a powerful nose with good ripeness, reaching 14.5% alcohol but keeping its poise with a good pH and acidity, coming through as medium to full-bodied with juicy berry fruit and abundant, slightly dusty tannins.
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.