Winemaker Notes
This versatile wine will complement any dish due to its freshness. It goes very well with spice and hot food. Perfect with ham and charcuterie. It combines very well with Indian, Mexican and Chinese style food.
Blend: 60% Garnacho, 30% Tempranillo, 10% Viura
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Maybe the idea of a Gran Reserva rosé seems crazy, but this great wine happens to be a rosé. The whole range of dried fruit, plus a lemon-zest freshness which lights up the full and complex body. Take your time to unravel this wine’s mystery, if you can find one of the rare bottles. Drink or hold.
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Wine & Spirits
Here’s a rosé that transcends the category. It’s a rare release: The last vintage Mercedes Lopéz de Heredia produced was 2000—and she makes it in the same resolutely traditional manner as her whites and reds. Aged four years in old barrels and another six in bottle, there’s nothing frivolous about it. Rather, it feels like a snapshot of the place it was raised, in sepia tones. You can feel the old cellars and their worn-in house-made barrels in the rich, humid coolness the wine projects; you can feel the heat of the sun, which ripened the grapes to a mellow sweetness, now faded to notes of Cognac-drenched berries and flamed orange zest. There’s the scent of cedar trees and the cool earth beneath them, as well as the brushy herbs that toast in summer’s heat. And there’s a salinity, a savor that joins with the breezy acidity to urge more energy from the wine even days after it’s uncorked. It’s remarkably vivacious, and will continue to evolve with cellar time.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The only Gran Reserva rosé of the Rioja appellation (they were waiting for the appellation's back labels, as they have to print them especially for López de Heredia) makes a glorious comeback with the 2008 Viña Tondonia Rosado Gran Reserva, which follows the previous 2000. This has a completely different profile from the rest of the rosé wines produced in Rioja—and the whole world (I think, as I have not tasted them all!). It really is a "clarete," not a rosé, as it's produced with a mixture of red and white grapes (60% Garnacha, 30% Tempranillo and 10% Viura) fermented and macerated together. It's a matured and developed rosé aged in used American oak barrels for four years and kept in vat and bottle to be released at age ten.
Whether it’s playful and fun or savory and serious, most rosé today is not your grandmother’s White Zinfandel, though that category remains strong. Pink wine has recently become quite trendy, and this time around it’s commonly quite dry. Since the pigment in red wines comes from keeping fermenting juice in contact with the grape skins for an extended period, it follows that a pink wine can be made using just a brief period of skin contact—usually just a couple of days. The resulting color depends on grape variety and winemaking style, ranging from pale salmon to deep magenta.
Highly regarded for distinctive and age-worthy red wines, Rioja is Spain’s most celebrated wine region. Made up of three different sub-regions of varying elevation: Rioja Alta, Rioja Alavesa and Rioja Oriental. Wines are typically a blend of fruit from all three, although specific sub-region (zonas), village (municipios) and vineyard (viñedo singular) wines can now be labeled. Rioja Alta, at the highest elevation, is 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 and higher alcohol, which can add great body and richness to a blend.
Fresh and fruity Rioja wines labeled, Joven, (meaning young) see minimal aging before release, but more serious Rioja wines undergo multiple years in oak. Crianza and Reserva styles are aged for one year in oak, and Gran Reserva at least two, but in practice this maturation period is often quite a bit longer—up to about fifteen years.
Tempranillo provides the backbone of Rioja red wines, adding complex notes of red and black fruit, leather, toast and tobacco, while Garnacha supplies body. In smaller percentages, Graciano and Mazuelo (Carignan) often serve as “seasoning” with additional flavors and aromas. These same varieties are responsible for flavorful dry rosés.
White wines, typically balancing freshness with complexity, are made mostly from crisp, fresh Viura. Some whites are blends of Viura with aromatic Malvasia, and then barrel fermented and aged to make a more ample, richer style of white.