Winemaker Notes
Barón de Chirel is a modern classic which showcases the identity, tradition and modernity of Rioja.
Clear and bright with a lovely cherry-red color and hints of violet. Lively hue around the rim. This is an enormously expressive wine with great aromatic intensity of small, ripe, black fruits, graphite and mineral notes from the terroir, liquorice, subtle hints of flowers, and woodland undergrowth. Reminiscent of autumn when the leaves fall. Hot spices like cloves and black pepper, cocoa and tobacco, all extremely well defined. A powerful, dense, very rich attack. It combines sensations of volume, structure and richness with a silky texture which never ends. Lively tannins, discernible but ripe and which will become more polished with time. Very, very long and persistent, elegant with magnificent acidity which augurs well for great ageing.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This deep garnet-colored wine has a bouquet of cassis, Mission fig, dark chocolate and saddle leather. Luxurious tannins coat the tongue and gums, bathed in vibrant acidity and joined by blackberry, Luxardo cherry, chocolate-covered espresso bean and violet flavors with a soft hint of black olive paste that lingers on the tastebuds with a note of orange zest. Drink through 2048.
Cellar Selection -
Wine Spectator
Serious in style with crunchy cranberry, strawberry, cedar and toast on the nose and palate. It has fine-grained, well-integrated tannins and a chocolately, spicy sign off.
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James Suckling
Quite youthful for a Rioja such as this full of plums, black walnuts, dark spices, mocha and mineral. Tannic but fine-grained on the palate with a medium to full body and a lengthy finish.
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.