Winemaker Notes
Intense cherry red. Great intensity and elegance. Fruity notes appear at first, including cranberries and red forest fruits, alongside aromas of blue fruits such as sloe berries. Delicate aromas of pipe tobacco, menthol and cedar have been added through its ageing in French oak, with a mineral finish that gives it personality. It has notable weight on the palate, it is enveloping and glycerine, well balanced, with fine, polished tannins and a long, delicious finish leaving an aftertaste of dried fruit. Large and feathered game, all types of meat and mature cheeses.
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.