Winemaker Notes
Well covered cherry red color. On the nose, pleasant aromas of wild fruits, balsamic, dairy, fine toasts and toffee caramel stand out. It is meaty, structured and broad. With red, black, wild and smoked fruit. Complex, persistent and aromatic finish.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
This big red has a plush texture that wraps around muscular tannins. Plum and currant flavors mingle with licorice, cola and forest floor notes, with balsamic acidity for freshness. A burly wine, but harmonious. Best from 2020 through 2035.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The amount of oak in the reds tends to make them very similar, and this includes the 2015 Orben, where the nose is mostly about sweet spices, toast, smoke and noble woods with hints of cocoa, roasted coffee and toffee. The palate is even oakier than the nose, but it's quite good in its style. For fans of oaky reds.
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.