Winemaker Notes
Vibrant red leading slightly towards amber. Light fresh texture with notes of vanilla and dried berry aromas. Rich, very dry, smooth, developed. Firm tannins and good balance.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Dried flowers, toast, dried strawberries and a touch of potpourri on the nose. The palate is cohesive and medium-bodied, with flesh and balance through the mid-palate. The tannins are polished, highly elegant, silky and soft, giving the wine subtle balance.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Following the appreciation of the 2007 vintage from María José López de Heredia, the red 2007 Viña Tondonia Reserva is showing great, revealing unusual finesse and elegance. The nose is a little reticent but nuanced and complex, a little shy rather than explosive. The palate is medium-bodied, and the tannins are very refined. This has to be one of the finest vintages of Viña Tondonia Reserva of recent years.
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Vinous
Limpid red. An intensely perfumed bouquet evokes raspberry, cherry cola, potpourri and exotic spices, with a vanilla topnote and a smoky mineral flourish. Sweet and focused in the mouth, offering sappy red fruit, spicecake, mocha and rose pastille flavors that flesh out on the back half. Finishes very long and spicy, with a resonating floral note, well-knit tannins and a touch of medicinal herbs.
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.