Winemaker Notes
A polished, tightly wound and elegant wine with refined floral/spice aromatics is supported by fine tannins for a silky texture, leading to a persistent finish of red berries and subtle oak. Blossoms with air and will age gracefully for years, in the manner of top Burgundy.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
2012 was a warm and dry year, when some vines were blocked and stopped ripening the grapes. Surprisingly enough, many wines have retained more freshness than what the natural conditions of the year anticipated. Valenciso's 2012 Reserva has more stuffing and power than the 2011 and comes from a year that was saved by some rains in September and big temperature contrasts between day and night. It's very tasty, almost salty (the words of Jean Gonon from St Joseph saying "our wines are salty, to be enjoyed with food. There is no room for sweetness in our wines," comes to my mind). It's a modern classical Rioja in the making, still young but showing some development and incipient complexity. These wines develop slowly and nicely in bottle and seem to hit the spot after some eight years after the harvest.
Rating: 93+ -
James Suckling
Iron and iodine are infused with licorice, cassis, vanilla and cherry liqueur. The tannins chisel out a layered approach of subtle dark fruit on the palate, the bold acidity being the driving factor throughout. Delicious and mouthwatering on the finish. Drink in 2021.
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.