Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Tasted once again, the 2021 Finca Martelo is mostly Tempranillo with around 5% other grapes, including Mazuelo, Garnacha and even white Viura, from three vineyards—Martelo, Camino de la Iglesia and Altos de Las Cuevas, the last two representing only 7% this year. For the first time, part of their Viñedos Artesanales wines were not bottled on their own. This wine will have more of these grapes from other vineyards in the future, and they are adding complexity to the wine. The grapes were cooled down to four degrees Celsius and put in the vats to macerate and warm up until fermentation started. Malolactic was in American and French oak barrels and lasted two months, and the wine completed an élevage of two years, 80% in American oak barrels and 20% in French ones. It's ripe, gastronomic and elegant, with ripeness, 14.5% alcohol and the freshness of the year; it has the signature and the tannins from 2021, sweet and silky and very elegant. It's very balanced and young and should develop nicely in bottle; as only the best vintages of the finest wines do, this has not moved an inch from last year.
Rating: 95+ -
Jeb Dunnuck
From a special vineyard planted to 60+-year-old vines, the 2021 Finca Martelo is a field blend of 95% Tempranillo and the rest Graciano, Mazuelo, Garnacha, and Viura co-fermented together. Soft, earthy, and spicy in subtle black cherry and plum, it is medium-bodied and aged 24 months in French (20%) and American (80%) oak, made in a modern style for earlier approachability. It succeeds, reaching a lovely balance of elegant suppleness and length.
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James Suckling
This shows good aging complexity with refined hazelnut chocolate, caramelized citrus, licorice, cloves and preserved plums. Firm and fine-grained, this has medium to full body and a long, structured finish. A blend of 95% tempranillo with mazuelo, garnacha and viura. The vineyard is over 60 years old. Drink from 2026.
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Wine Spectator
A sleek, harmonious red, this shows mouthwatering focus, with flavors of chopped black cherry and black raspberry, cedar, cocoa powder and wild rosemary framed by sculpted tannins. The tang of minerally iron and saline chimes on the finish. Drink now through 2035.
Torre de Ona was forged in 1995, when La Rioja Alta, S.A. led this exciting project with the aim of making an excellent quality wine incorporating all the personality of the best vine plots in the prestigious Rioja Alavesa area. A unique location that they were convinced provided clear potential for making a great modern wine, capable of transmitting – as with the great "chateaux" – the exclusive characteristics of a privileged estate.
Since then, and always focused on the continual improvement in the wine, Torre de Ona has made important changes to the vineyards and winery. But it has been in recent years, more specifically since 2005, that they started to pay very special attention to the different plots that make up the estate, and the separate production and maturing of each sub-plot, evaluating the soil and determining where the best quality grapes grow, only then collecting harvests that meet the quality standards for an important international wine. This is how they made the Torre de Ona, Finca San Martín and Club de Cosecheros (Harvester's Club) wines.
They have taken a big step forward. But they will not rest there. They constantly strive for excellence and are convinced that for the Torre de Ona winery, the best has yet to come.
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.