Contino Rioja Reserva 2017
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Suckling
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Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
On the nose, echoes of healthy and mature red fruit in after a perfect maturation. Floral and balsamic notes add freshness, all together in harmony with subtle toasted notes from its time in barrel. In the mouth, fine and subtle with nice tannins and perfect acidity that make it a persistent wine with a long finish.
Blend: 85% Tempranillo, 10% Graciano and 5% Mazuelo and Garnacha
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Aromas of chocolate, smoked meat and berries. Really perfumed and subtle. The palate is full-bodied with ripe, creamy tannins that show tension and poise. Mellow and fine. So silky and brilliant. Complex. Polished. Drink now or hold.
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Wine Spectator
This sleek red offers raspberry and plum flavors flanked with anise, orange zest and mineral notes that are focused and fresh, followed by a smooth finish. Drink now through 2029.
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Wine & Spirits
Fresh and juicy depths of boysenberry flavor provide a base to this wine’s layers of cherry skin and damp earth, as if the bright sun cast its light into an otherwise dark cellar. It’s cool, fragrant and earthy, a red to serve with grilled suckling lamb.
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Decanter
Sweet spice, vanilla and red fruit nose. The palate is vibrant, round, savoury and quite complex with blueberry and forest floor notes. Good ageing potential. Blend: 85% Tempranillo, 10% Graciano, 5% Mazuelo.
Other Vintages
2018-
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Contino, the first Rioja château 1973, impelled by CVNE and the owners of the 62-hectare property located in the Rioja Alavesa. The history of the property dates from the 16th century, and is reflected in its name. The “contino” was the officer in charge of a guard corps of a hundred soldiers who protected the royal family "de contino” (continuously) from the times of the Catholic Monarchs onwards. According to the tradition, Saint Gregory, the patron saint of vineyards, passed through the lands of this same Rioja property, giving rise to the use of his figure in the logo of this winery, and to the use of his name for some of the plots now planted with vines. The wine produced on this property, fruity and elegant, is heir to the best Rioja tradition. It is made with an individualised grape harvesting system in which only grapes from the same vineyards that surround the old manor house are used. Their origin in the various plots is noted. The perfect combination of soils, Atlantic-Mediterranean climate and refined technique have made Contino, more than 30 years after the first vintage, a reference product both in and outside Spain. The 62 hectares of Laserna vineyards in Laguardia are protected by the hill called the Cerro de la Mesa, which gives this land a characteristic orientation and mesoclimate. The hand-cut grapes are transported along a short road to the outbuildings so as to avoid damaging their qualities.
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.