Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
Tempranillo rooted in high-elevation limestone-rich soils develops a particular briskness that you can find here in this wine, especially if you decant it and forget it for several hours before dinner. It develops from a bright line of red cherry and American oak toward a complex tension between that brightness and an underlying austerity. Oak plays a major role for now but should meld with the fruit as the wine mellows over the next five years.
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.