Winemaker Notes
Viña Alberdi is characterized by a notable food-pairing versatility. It is an ideal companion to appetizers, snacks and barbecues, perfect with rice, pastas and stews, and great with lightly-grilled meat and fish.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This is a very classic Rioja with dried fruit and hints of vanilla. Lots of plums and red fruit. Full-bodied, round and juicy. Exotic and beautiful. Very pretty 2012.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Cropped from an extremely dry year, the 2012 Viña Alberdi was saved by some rains in late September. The aging lasted two years, the first one in new American oak barrels and the second in used ones. It felt livelier than the 2011. This 2012 has some aromas of raw meat, with marked toast from the American oak (all the American oak barrels are built by their own coopers), with a good combination of fruit and spice, tradition and modernity. It's approachable and easy to drink, but a little more time in bottle should polish it even further.
Rating:90+
Always evolving quality, elegance, innovation, evolution... They are the pillars on which the five founding families erected our winery in 1890 and built a way of living, feeling and producing wines of the highest quality that continue to evolve subtly, perfectly adapting to new tastes. This is how the permanent pursuit of excellence started; a pursuit that continues into the 21st century with identical enthusiasm. We draw the best from our winemaking tradition and wisdom —our own cooperage, manual racking, long ageing periods, etc.— and combine it with the most modern winemaking technology. Today, our wines are an international exemplar of the great wines of Rioja and our brands are present in the best restaurants across all continents.
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.