Do we ship to you?.
More wines available from La Rioja Alta
Pre-Arrival
La Rioja Alta Rioja Gran Reserva 890 2001
750ml - 1 Bottle
Bottle:
$200.95
No doubt about it: ‘This is the best 890 in our history,' declares Julio Sáenz, technical director of La Rioja...
Pre-Arrival
La Rioja Alta Rioja Gran Reserva 890 2005
750ml - 1 Bottle
Bottle:
$195.44
The aromas to this are stunning with dried strawberry, stone and fresh mushroom. Full body and very tight with...
Pre-Arrival
La Rioja Alta Rioja Gran Reserva 904 1997
750ml - 1 Bottle
Bottle:
$110.45
The current release is the 1997 Gran Reserva 904, still densely colored and alluringly perfumed. Aromas of dried...
Pre-Arrival
La Rioja Alta Rioja Gran Reserva 904 2001
750ml - 1 Bottle
Bottle:
$115.78
This is a very complete wine with such beautiful length and intensity. It’s compact and very driven with a great...
Pre-Arrival
La Rioja Alta Rioja Gran Reserva 904 2005
1.5Ltr - 1 Bottle
Bottle:
$177.78
The 2005 Gran Reserva 904 is a superb blend of Tempranillo from the villages of Briñas, Labastida and Villalba with...
More Details
Winery
La Rioja Alta
Vintage: 2007
2007 was the year that saw California's wine industry pick up once again, after a troubling couple of years. Indeed, all across the state of California, fantastic harvests were reported as a result of fine weather conditions throughout the flowering and ripening periods, and Napa Valley and Santa Barbera wines were widely considered amongst the best in the world in 2007, with Pinot Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes packing in all sorts of fine and desirable features in this year. South Africa, too, had a much-needed fantastic year for red wines, with Pinotage particularly displaying strong characteristics, alongside the country's other flagship red wine grape varietals.
Over in Europe, France had another fine year, especially for white wines. Champagne wineries were very happy with their Chardonnay harvests, and the Loire Valley and Graves in Bordeaux are proclaiming 2007 to be a memorable year due to the quality of their white wine grapes. For French red wines, Provence had their best year for almost a decade, as did the Southern Rhone. However, 2007 was most favorable to Italy, who saw high yields of exceptional quality across almost all of their major wine producing regions. Tuscany is claiming to have produced its best Chianti and Brunello wines for several years in 2007, and Piedmont and Veneto had a wonderful year for red wines. For Italian white wines, 2007 was an extremely successful year for Alto Adige and Campania. Germany also had a very good 2007, with Riesling displaying extremely dry and crisp characteristics, as did Portugal, where Port wine from 2007 is said to be one to collect.
Varietal: Tempranillo
For millennia, the Tempranillo grape varietal has been esteemed and revered by winemakers in their native Spain. These grapes are packed full of intense and fascinating flavors, often rewarding wine drinkers with notes of tobacco, leather, plum and herbs alongside their spicy and full bodied character. Their thick, black skins result in their wines being very deep red in color, and often high in tannins. As such, Tempranillo grapes are usually blended with other fine varietals to produce exceptionally balanced and delicious blended wines, such as those found in La Riot and other important wine regions around the world. Despite them being a notoriously tricky varietal to grow, their popularity continues to increase, and winemakers continue to impress the world with this excellent example of a red wine grape.
Region: La Rioja
Spanish wines have always been packed full of character and tradition, making Spain a fascinating country for any fan of Old World wines. By far the most beloved and well known wine region in Spain is La Rioja, a lush and fertile region in the north of the country, famed for its superb single variety and blended red wines, usually made from Tempranillo and Garnacha varietal grapes. These two key grape varietals have been cultivated in this part of Spain for centuries, and are capable of expressing not only the rich, delicious fruit flavors they carry, but also the finer features of their terroir. La Rioja's terroirs are fine ones indeed, with a range of mineral rich soils, and climatic conditions which are ideal for viticulture, resulting in wines of real character and distinction.
Country: Spain
Ever since the Phoenicians and Romans brought their knowledge of vine cultivation to Spanish soils, the country's culture has grown alongside wine production, with wine being a vital part of Spanish identity and Spanish traditions. Each region of Spain has a wine quite distinct from the others, and it is produced by smallholders and families as much as it is by large companies and established wineries. From the relatively mild and lush regions of La Rioja to the arid plateaus that surround Madrid, grapes are grown in abundance for the now booming Spanish wine industry, and new laws and regulations have recently been put in place to keep the country's standards high. By combining traditional practices with modern technology, Spanish wineries are continuing to produce distinctive wines of great character, flavor and aroma, with the focus shifting in recent decades to quality over quantity.