Winemaker Notes
This is a cherry-colored, brooding wine. The aromatic intensity gives us a wide range of aromas. We can find the fruits from the forest, highlighting blueberries and gooseberries, licorice and aromas from the ageing in french oak barrels, such as clove, smoked or roasted flavors, toffees, etc. Complex, floral, its entrance is smooth with a step marked by a tannin that is perfectly balanced with the unctuousness of the wine.
Professional Ratings
-
James Suckling
A full-bodied, ripe and delicious red with firm, lightly chewy tannins. Lots of cherries, dried flowers, coconut and rosemary. Lavender and white roses, too. Firm and very well structured. Tight and fresh at the end. First year with single vineyard on the label. 100% tempranillo. Try this after 2025.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The modern 2019 Real de Asúa has been produced since 2018 with grapes from a paraje in the village of Villalba called Carromaza (now mentioned on the label) on sandy, south-facing soils that were harvested between the 8th and 9th of October. 2019 was a low-yielding year with loose and small bunches that ripened thoroughly delivering wines that are balanced and have aging potential. It's 14.5% alcohol and has mellow acidity and good freshness and balance. It fermented in small oak vats with indigenous yeasts followed by malolactic in new French oak barrels and then matured in new and second use French barriques for 12 months. The wine is very impressive, showy, clean and harmonious, without any noticeable oak, juicy, harmonious, young, fresh and elegant. It has concentration, power and finesse. It has a new label and bottle and a much more modern image but with the essence form the past. The wine has improved a lot, and it has grip and very fine tannins. Very impressive. It has the naked essence of Rioja without the layers and layers of oak, now from a single vineyard where they want freshness and a lush but floral and delicate profile you have to drink effortlessly. Superb.
-
Wine Spectator
A graceful though powerful red, with an enticing thread of licorice and spice winding through creme de cassis, black cherry, medicinal herbs and iron. Features firm tannins and orange peel acidity that are well-integrated, providing a fine frame for the concentrated flavor range. Drink now through 2037. 250 cases made, 50 cases imported.
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.