Winemaker Notes
Deep cherry color with shades of shiny red. To the nose, aromas of berries and licorice balanced by hints of clove, rosemary, thyme and tobacco leaves coming from the oak cask ageing. To the palate, it shows its elegance thanks to a gentle tannin providing roundness and freshness. The wine tastes for long in the palate, with an interestingly complex aftertaste.
Pair with game and red meats.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Imperial is CVNE's most accessible and affordable top-end Rioja, and what a winner it is in 2010. Cool, toasty aromas show sweet maple and vanilla notes along with berry and cassis scents. Fresh but weighty and elegant, this deals ripe berry and loamy earth flavors in front of a mellow finish that's clean and not too demanding. Drink now through 2022.
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Wine Spectator
Smoky and tarry notes give this rich red an austere character, but plum, licorice, soy and mineral notes promise an expressive future. The tannins and acidity are balanced and unobtrusive. Best from 2016 through 2030.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
A worthy follow up of the 2008, the 2010 Imperial Reserva is the usual blend of Tempranillo with 10% Graciano and 5% Mazuelo (aka Cariñena) fermented with yeasts selected from their own vineyards and matured in American and French oak barrels for two years before being fined with egg whites and bottled unfiltered. This was a textbook Rioja Alta vintage that produced very balanced, fresh wines with plenty of stuffing. This is no exception, showing some fresh orange-peel notes intermixed with hints of leather, blackberries, cherries and pepper with the oak perfectly folded into the fruit. The texture is soft and the tannin fine-grained. It has good acidity and flavors that start to reveal some development and complexity, although this feels very young. A textbook Reserva with the ability to develop in bottle.
Cvne, is situated in Rioja in the traditional neighborhood of the station, where the oldest wineries of Rioja Alta established themselves, for the main reason of transporting their goods to the port of Bilbao.
In 1879, two brothers decided to set up a business in the recently flourishing trade of the wine business. C.V.N.E., Compañía Vinicola del Norte de España (The Northern Spanish Wine Company) or la Cuné, as it is commonly known in Haro, was created. This cellar still reflects the origins of the company and is kept in the traditional neighborhood of the Haro station.
The Cune winery in Haro, is made up of a group of buildings, mostly from the 19th century and arranged around a courtyard surrounded by pavilions for the purpose of wine production, aging, and bottling.
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.