Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Riscal has outdone itself with this outstanding seven-year-old wine that leans toward modern but holds onto classic Rioja DNA. The nose is full of tobacco, balsamic accents and has a core of black-fruit flavors. A rich, pure, lightly baked tasting finish is excellent, like the rest of the wine.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2006 Baron de Chirel is a wine that takes us back to the old Cuvee Medoc which was produced by Riscal only in the best years in the mid-1900s (but which apparently were never sold and the winery kept them for themselves!) and contained a high proportion of Cabernet Sauvignon. This 2006 has 20% Cabernet Sauvignon complementing the Tempranillo and is aged exclusively in French oak barrels for a period of 20 months. It is showing much better than when I tasted it previously, things slowly coming into place with time in bottle. There’s ripe fruit with just a hint of mint and some caramel, good acidity and length. I think this is a great showing for the Chirel 2006.
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.