I bought this half price at a supermarket "wine festival". Having been the victim of unscrupulous supermarket discounting before, I didn't really hold out much hope for it. However with the big discount it didn't cost much, and you can rarely go badly wrong with Rioja so I thought it was worth a whirl.
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Wine smells richly of vanilla, blackberries, oak wood and a touch of Pinot undergrowth as well.
In the mouth, the word that comes to mind is balance. There's a good balance of acid and tannin, with a little mouth-coating woodiness about it. There's a good balance of flavours, with opulent black and red berries and some cherry too set off nicely by earthier notes of smoke and wood. And there's a nice balance of spice too with some tingly-hot Rioja spice complemented by sweet spice such as cinnamon.
After such and impressive mouthful, the finish is disappointingly short.
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So, on the whole, quite a bargain!
I'd begun to think of that undergrowth flavour as being distinctly Pinot, and I'd just about convinced myself that I might be able to identify it in a blind taste. But then it turned up in a Saint Joseph, and now here as well so it's clearly more common than I'd realised.