Winemaker Notes
#40 Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2025
This is the calling card of the estate, representing the heart of the production. The grapes come from 157 different plots in the three small valleys surrounding the winery. Site: Labastida at 480m – 705m Vine Age: 20-90+ years Soil: Limestone with calcareous clay and exposed bedrock Farming: Organic Vinification: All of the grapes were hand selected in the vineyard. The wine was fermented with indigenous yeasts in stainless steel tanks. Aged 20 months in foudres and barrels of various sizes.
Blend: 83% Tempranillo,10% Garnacha, 7% Graciano
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The estate red 2016 Reserva comes from a late growing season and was produced with local varieties like Tempranillo, Garnacha, Graciano and others from their 86 hectares of vineyards at 590 to 805 meters in altitude on limestone, sandstone and marl soils. The grapes were picked late with good ripeness and health and fermented with natural yeasts in stainless steel and open-top oak vats and then matured in oak containers of different sizes for 20 to 21 months. These are more classical wines, with a more evolved nose, with high ripeness and some balsamic and medicinal notes. It has a dusty palate with Nebbiolo-like tannins.
Rating: 93+ -
Wine Spectator
There's a bright, buoyant feel to this fluid red. Its frame of mandarin orange peel acidity and chalky tannins is well-meshed with a dark and expressive core of macerated blackberry and black plum skin. Fragrant notes of leather, dried flowers, mountain herbs, licorice and paprika add depth to the fruit profile and linger on the finish. Tempranillo, Garnacha and Graciano. Drink now through 2040.
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.