Winemaker Notes
Valenciso is elegant, tasty, a wine that is not heavy in the mouth yet which fills it with aromas. It is subtle yet has a firmness that enables ti to age well for many years. Its taste is indicative of not only how the Atlantic influence softens the Rioja Alta climate but also of the generous clay-limestone soil, whose acidity makes the wine lively and full of vibrant aromas. Long and persistent, balanced, rich and full of nuances: a wine which opens up in the glass.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A powerful and rich, maturing Rioja with an elegant balance of polished tannins and lively blackberries and blueberries. If the fresh finish was a bit longer, this would rate even higher. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The elegant and balanced 2011 Reserva, cropped from a warm and dry year, was produced exclusively with Tempranillo grapes from the Haro region that were fermented uncrushed in concrete vats, including malolactic. The wine matured for 18 months in 90% French barriques and 10% oak barrels that, for the first time, were produced with oak from the Caucasus, which they like for its fine grain. There's black rather than red fruit here and some notes of licorice and ink with a touch of leather, a quite powerful and ripe vintage for this bottling. It has abundant, fine-grained tannins and a long, dry finish. 1
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Wine & Spirits
This smells and tastes like the food you might encounter at dinner in Rioja, from spicy piquillo peppers to grilled lamb chops. Those animal and vegetal notes meet enough berry fruit to create a complex traditional style of Rioja with the tight, rosy scent of black tea.
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.