Winemaker Notes
Raposo is the Tempranillo from Villabuena, aged in large oak barrels. Crunchy brambles and red cherry fruit segue into a palate that’s savory, dense and serious with the potential to age.
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
Sandra Bravo is based in Villabuena de Alava, a center for wine production below the mountains. While most of her wines grow at higher elevations in the Sierra de Toloño (around 2,100 feet), farmed organically, this wine grows near the winery (at 1,600 feet), farmed under biodynamics. It’s a tempranillo with some richness and power, even as it follows a simple line of tart strawberry flavor and seedy boysenberry tannins. It’s a natty wine that feels clean, with lasting spice and fresh herb notes.
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.