Winemaker Notes
Bright red and garnet with a rim turning to brick showing its extended ageing in barrel and bottle. Complex aromas from its development and ageing, mature ripe black fruit, and vanilla and cinnamon spice, with a deep mineral core. Velvety smooth, harmonious with a fresh finish.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
I love the nose of the 2014 Gran Reserva, all incense, cigar box, spices and ash and a polished palate but with lively acidity, perhaps reflecting a challenging and rainy harvest, and 13.5% alcohol, denoting freshness. It's mostly Tempranillo with 10% Graciano and 5% Mazuelo selected from their Finca El Estanque estate; it matured in barrel for two years. Best After 2022
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Wine Enthusiast
This dark-ruby-colored wine has a bouquet of dark plum, dried Mediterranean herbs and cigar box. A layer of dense tannins plays backup to flavors of black currant, blackberry, licorice, black truffle and cedar chest. A touch of bright fruit makes its way to the long-lasting finish.
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.