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.
Great match for roast meats, foie, game, aged or even blue cheeses.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Deep garnet in the glass, this wine has aromas of black currant, sage leaf and cedar block. An underlying note of pomegranate lightens the load of muscular tannins that encase blackberry, anisette, and juniper-berry flavors with earthiness that persists into the lengthy finish.
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Wine Spectator
A creamy, medium-bodied red, showing baked cherry, dried dill, vanilla and mocha notes framed by orange peel acidity and lightly chalky tannins. Reveals hints of loamy earth, graphite and spice box that linger on the finish. Tempranillo, Graciano and Mazuelo.
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.