Winemaker Notes
With so much spicy, peppery, red fruit character, this wine is a natural for olive bread and charcuterie, especially fattier meats like speck, prosciutto, black forest ham, and at the top of the list, jamon iberico. Tapenade, hummus, aged hard cheeses and sausage with fennel and similar casual bites will pair well with Calma.
Professional Ratings
-
Vinous
Limpid ruby-red. Expansive scents of fresh red and blue fruits, candied flowers and baking spices, plus a hint of vanilla in the background. Velvety in texture and appealingly sweet, offering sappy boysenberry and cherry-vanilla flavors that firm up on the back half. Shows very good depth as well as vivacity and finishes with dusty tannin's adding gentle grip.
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.