Winemaker Notes
Intense color with a slightly brick-red border. Very complex bouquet of balsamic notes with delicate wood notes. Full-bodied palate with ripe plum and sweet spices over toasted flavors. It maintains the freshness of a subtle vividness that promises excellent aging potential. Flavorsome, rich with a lingering finish.
Blend: 85% Tempranillo, 8% Garnacha Tinta, 7% Graciano
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A fragrant and complex nose of cherries, plums, roasted spices, dried black mushrooms, refined soy sauce and cigar box. Such a lovely note of umami savoriness! It’s medium-bodied with a fine grip of fine tannins. Delicate, velvety texture, but tight, with a very savory, long and layered finish. Classic Rioja Gran Reserva.
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Wine Enthusiast
Deep red-violet to the eye, this wine has aromas of black cherry, mocha and violet. It opens with bright flavors of raspberry and Mission fig that are backed by licorice, dark chocolate and dried sage flavors. Sinewy tannins and a note of orange zest endure on the palate.
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Wine Spectator
Round and inviting, with fine-grained, creamy tannins layered with warm fig and black plum flavors, plus hints of black tea leaf, chocolate shavings, smoke and spice. Tempranillo, Garnacha Tinta and Graciano. Drink now through 2030. 22,000 cases made, 5,000 cases imported.
In 1970, Enrique Forner founded Marqués de Cáceres Unión Vitivinícola S.A., a historic alliance of growers in the village of Cenicero in the Rioja Alta subregion of Rioja. The enterprising Forner family has been devoted to the wine trade for five generations. Their search for the best vine growers and vineyards in Rioja and the introduction of a Bordeaux concept revolutionized the production and business model of the region. They work with one single objective: producing the highest quality wines. Today this obsession continues to be the leitmotif of Cristina Forner, the fifth generation of this distinguished wine family.
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.