Winemaker Notes
Intense purple colour with violet glints. Highly aromatic with black fruit and ripe sloe notes. Intense minerality that, together with the vanilla, spice and tobacco notes from the barrel, give the wine a great character. Oily, rich and intense with a sweetness right across the mouth, showing great finesse. Wellbalanced acidity with the alcohol, with the typical “Valpiedra” freshness predominant. A long, cool and mineral finish, with a touch of fine woods.
Pair with vegetables and beans casseroles, hen soup. For meats it goes better with white ones, turkey, sock lamb and pork. It perfectly matches with rice with rabbit and stewed poularde.
Professional Ratings
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Vinous
From gravel soils near the Ebro, the 2020 Cantos de Valpiedra was aged for a year in oak (60% French, 40% American). Vanilla, black fruit, camphor and plum emerge on the nose before it establishes a dry, medium-bodied profile in the mouth with slightly active, fine-grained tannins. Ripe and savory, the lengthy finish is shaped by the vintage and terroir.
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Wine Spectator
The aromatic, fruit-driven and juicy 2020 Cantos de Valpiedra is velvety, clean and modern, with a balanced and tasty palate, contained ripeness, 13.5% alcohol and good freshness. It matured in new barrels for 12 months in the style of a modern Crianza. With time in the glass, it develops an acute note of licorice. 150,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in November 2022.
Rating: 91+
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.