Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Miguel Angel de Gregorio makes wines that match his exuberant personality, and Aurus, with 85% old-vine Tempranillo and 15% Graciano, is his premier offering. The 2001s exotic nose pumps licorice, clove, nutmeg and vanilla on top of the ripest black-fruit aromas going. With pillowy tannins, unmatched breadth and huge flavors of blackberry, plum and chocolate, there's no denying this wine’s quality and stature.
Editors' Choice -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2001 Aurus has a peppermint-scented bouquet with impressive fruit concentration and seems far more backward than the 2000. It has fine balance with ripe minty dark cherry and cassis fruit and an exuberant, youthful, spicy finish that has another 15-20 year ahead of it. Wonderful! Drink now-2030.
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Wine & Spirits
The flavors seem to be amplified out of the bright, dense color of this wine, with rose and red-cherry skins adding to the plump juiciness of the flavor. It's fragrant with layered complexities and full-on richness of texture, a modern style that remains sensitive to the distinctive character of the fruit. The ripe fruit and oak translate to meatiness, making this a mouthwatering red for thick-cut lamb chops smothered in cèpes and sun-dried tomatoes.
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Wine Spectator
This punchy red is dominated by toasty, smoky oak flavors, but there's plenty of ripe fruit underneath, with notes of plum, raisin and spice, and enough acidity to keep it lively.
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.