Winemaker Notes
Goes well with all meat dishes irrespective of their preparation.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 1994 Vina Tondonia Gran Reserva has an elegant bouquet with light red cherries, orange blossom, mahogany bureau and burnt buttered toast. The palate has a meaty, savory entry with crisp tannins and racy acidity. It displays superb structure towards the finish where one finds notes of bitter lemon, orange peel and sage. Delicious! Drink now-2030+.
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Wine & Spirits
There was a time when some of the greatest wines of Rioja were white, aged to levels of complexity that would drive even the most dour Spanish royal to drink. Today, the only winery to mintain such treasures in current release R. Lopez Heredia. Now entering its third decade, this wine is insanely rich, with a heady fragrance that blends peach skin, litchi, kumquat and leather. The texture is round and supple, the oak-aged fruit character lasting with delicacy and persistence. A rarity within reach.
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.