Winemaker Notes
With its structure and elegance, it is ideal with food. This is a wine that invites you to drink and is a good accompaniment to stewed and roasted meats, as well as game and cured charcuterie.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Finca Martelo comes from one of the longest harvests in their history. It's a blend of Tempranillo with 6% other varieties, Mazuelo, Garnacha and even white Viura intermixed in the field with a south-facing slope on very white soils. The grapes were hand picked, destemmed and crushed, then put through a seven-day cold soak before fermenting (uncrushed) in stainless steel followed by malolactic that took 98 days. The wine matured in used oak barrels, 80% American and 20% French, for 24 months with four traditional rackings. This wine has a separate winery with smaller vats for each of the plots, and the wine was kept in vat for a further six months before it was bottled in June 2020. It has 14.5% alcohol and a pH of 3.57. It has a lively and young color and a very expressive nose (the cold soak and the semi-carbonic maceration), and there is a strong spiciness despite the fact they never use any new oak. It's mellow and round, with glossy tannins and a very gentle mouthfeel, with good complexity and those chalky tannins. This is a young and more modern wine than the range from la Rioja Alta. This is a wine that was developed between 2005 and 2012, and they saw the mix of barrels worked better than a single origin. 80,000 bottles produced.
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James Suckling
Aromas of ripe dark fruit, walnuts, currant bush and bark. Medium-to full-bodied with creamy tannins and bright acidity. Polished and silky with mellow fruit character and a fresh, floral touch to it. Firm finish with notes of chocolate. Drink or hold.
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Wine Spectator
This has good focus to the flavors of baked black cherry and wild strawberry, sandalwood, dark chocolate and dried thyme in an accessible, medium-bodied package. This is enlivened by a touch of orange peel acidity, while light tannins firm the finish. Tempranillo, Garnacha, Mazuelo and Viura. Drink now through 2026. 6,500 cases made, 1,300 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.