September 2, 2022
By rackhouse
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.
Six families of farmers founded Bodegas Burgo Viejo in 1987 (with the next generation coming onboard, it is now sixteen families working together). Burgo Viejo´s main asset has always been the exquisite winemaking process of grapes collected from its vineyards throughout the years, back to the times when they were just wine cellar selling in bulk. They started as a cooperative in the 1950s. Burgo Viejo wines are exported to Japan, China, Denmark, the UK, Belgium, and the U.S. Young Gorka Etxebarria is the leading winemaker and has been working with Burgo Viejo since December 2003.
The vineyards measure 200 hectares – 494 acres with 90% tinto, 5% rosado, and 5% blanco. They spread throughout the municipality of Alfaro, La Rioja, Spain at the foothills of Yerga Mountain, on the banks of the fertile Ebro Valley. This area offers a huge diversity of soils and microclimates where the grape varietals, Tempranillo, Mazuelo, Garnacha, Carignan, Graciano, and Viura grow to become Burgo Viejo wines. Most of the vines are 30 years old. Some Garnacha is over 90 years old and some young organic Graciano have been planted.
This offering is a very bright, deep, and clean violet color; blackberry and licorice aromas in the nose; a long-lasting, powerful, and smooth taste in the mouth.
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