Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2004 Fincas de Ganuza Reserva is composed of 90% Tempranillo and10% Graciano both from old vines. It is aged for 25 months in 50% new French and American oak before bottling without fining or filtration. A glass-coating opaque purple, the aromatic array includes earth notes, mineral, incense, black cherry, and blackberry. This leads to a mouth-filling, intensely flavored wine with good grip, excellent depth, and enough structure to evolve for several more years. This lengthy effort will deliver prime drinking from 2011 to 2019.
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Wine Spectator
Rich yet fresh, this red delivers cherry, licorice, chocolate and olive flavors over firm tannins balanced by lively acidity. The oak is well-integrated, the finish clean. Drink now through 2014. 500 cases imported.
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.