Winemaker Notes
Deep purple with garnet highlights, this wine shows deep, spicy aromas of blueberries, leather, mocha, and cacao. On the palate, it shows round tannins, crisp acidity, and balanced body.
Pair this wine with juicy steaks, lamb chops, and beef kebab.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Aromas of ripe dark fruit, baking spices, cedar wood and tar. Medium-to full-bodied with fine tannins. Attractive ripe and savory fruit flavors and notes of walnut to close.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The light and classical 2016 Reserva was produced with 100% Tempranillo from Rioja Alta. It fermented with indigenous yeasts in stainless steel and matured in used French and American oak barrels for 24 months. It has notes of forest floor, sweet spices and decayed leaves, with a subtle palate at 13.5% alcohol and very good freshness (the pH is 3.46), polished and sleek, and a textbook dry finish of cedarwood, ash and cigar box. 100,000 bottles produced. It was bottled in May 2019.
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Wine Spectator
A lively red, offering a blend of both sweet and savory, with macerated black cherry and currant fruit accented by melted licorice and spiced orange. Reveals iron, loamy earth and cured tobacco notes, with supple, fine-grained tannins that firm the finish. Drink now
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.