Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The prodigious 2001 Dioro Seleccion is a 200-case cuvee packaged in a heavy bottle. Aged completely in French oak, this loaded 2001 boasts a deep purple color as well as a sweet perfume of lead pencil shavings, white chocolate, tobacco leaves, creme de cassis, cherries, cola, and smoky new oak. Full-bodied and ripe, with superb purity and a multilayered texture...
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Wine Enthusiast
This is a very new wine, but one worth getting if you like the modern style Spanish red. Made from 70-year old Tempranillo as well as some Mazuelo, Graciano and Garnacha, you’ll be digging into a massively roasted, well-oaked bruiser. Caramel, mocha and chocolate mix with full berry fruit to yield a wine of concentration and body.
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.