Winemaker Notes
Dark cherry wine, alive, with hardly any signs of evolution. High aromatic intensity, highlighting the toasted and spicy contributed by the French oak, with notes of ripe black fruit. The palate is fresh and unctuous, with soft and polished tannins where wood is very little present. Complex and elegant, with a long and balanced finish.
This wine pairs well with ham and cured cheeses, red meats, poultry, game stews, such as partridge, rabbit, venison, wild boar or roe deer, even seasoned with spicy sauces.
Professional Ratings
-
Decanter
Distinctive style, with hints of cassis, a floral touch, quite complex. On the palate it is finely textured, smooth but firm, very deep, long. A wine to keep. The 2004, starting to open, got 97pts – a benchmark, it will develop over many years. Drinking Window 2019 - 2045
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.