Other Red Blends from Rioja, Spain

90% tempranillo

10% garnacha, graciano and mazuela

13.2% alcohol by volume

els 9.0/10

Guia Penin 93

Wine Advocate 92

Compañía Vinícola del Norte del España, CVNE, a family winery and vineyard, was founded in 1879 in the small town of Haro within the wine growing region of Rioja, Spain. The town is renowned for the annual Haro Wine Festival, celebrated on the 29th of June, in honor of the town’s patron saint, San Pedro.  The event is inaugurated each year, with a possibly, somber and sober mass at the Hermitage of San Felices de Bilibio, followed by wine drinking competitions, and drenching thine neighbor with buckets of red wine, producing a population of lovely, glowing, lavender hued, inebriated participants. Songkran take note.

Today the company includes 4 wineries including Vina Real in Laguardia, established in 1920s, near the provincial seat of the Rioja wine district, Logrono; producing some of first oak barrel aged wine in the region.

The vineyards are grown on calcareous soils in the Rioja Alavesa wine sub-region at a few hundred feet above sea level, south of the Cantabrian Mountains, enjoying a calm, continental climate of moderate days in the low 70s, and nights dipping into the low 60s with 2 to 4 inches of rain during the growing season, although 2012 was very dry.

The wine has a clear to brilliant, garnet to ruby-red coloring; a bouquet of blackberries, cherries, plums, and earth. A wonderfully balanced, medium bodied wine with a very nice finish.

An outstanding wine.

$13.99 wine.com