2015 Rioja Vina Del Olivo
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Tasting notes
Brilliant violet. Highly perfumed aromas of ripe dark fruits, potpourri and incense are complicated by exotic spice and woodsmoke nuances. Sweet, seamless and expansive on the palate, offering densely packed blackberry, cherry-vanilla and rose pastille flavors that are braced by a spine of juicy acidity. Finishes sweet and impressively long, showing outstanding clarity and fine-grained tannins that blend smoothly with the wine's sappy fruit.
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Luis Gutiérrez, Wine Advocate
Josh Raynolds
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The one vineyard-designated red I tasted was the 2015 Viña del Olivo, from a specific plot of vines on chalk-rich soils with clay instead of the more common alluvial stones found on the estate and planted in 1980. It's a blend of 85% Tempranillo, 10% Graciano and 5% Mazuelo. It fermented in one 10,000-liter oak vat followed by malolactic in new oak barrels (70% French, 20% American and 10% Hungarian), where the wine aged for 18 months with racking every six months. It's a modern, ripe and generously oaked Rioja built for the future. This is a structured and slightly international, "expensively made" wine that gains with time in bottle as it absorbs the effect of the élevage and shows the character of the great vineyards from where it's sourced. Right now, there are lots of tannins too, and the flavors are very oak related, with spices, toast, smoke and coffee. It ends dry. Made in the style of the end of the 1990s, it's for fans of that style and for the future. 9,328 bottles and some larger formats were filled in May 2017.