Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Bright, focused and deep, this red marries power with elegance. Offers ripe black fruit flavors, with notes of smoke, licorice, tar and mineral, supported by well-integrated tannins and fueled by racy acidity. The juicy, floral finish lingers. Drink now through 2026. 200 cases imported.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
For most of my adult life, I have found Riojas to be too coarse and over-oaked—many of those wines had simply spent too much time in American oak barrels that resulted in flavors like a two-by-four wooden board. The 2011 Orben is not that way at all. It is a delicious Rioja showing beautiful red fruits, just a hint of oak, and fresh acidity. This mouthwatering wine drinks well now and would be a fantastic choice with chicken and sausage paella.
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.