Villota Vina Gena Vinedo Singular Rioja 2018
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James
Suckling -
Jeb
Dunnuck -
Wine &
Spirits
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Fresh and serious, botanical notes and mineral touches (limestone) and a wonderful finesse and volume. It is like looking at the vineyard and letting yourself be caught by an impression of purity and harmony.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Very pretty berry and chocolate aromas with mocha and cedar. It’s medium-to full-bodied with linear tannins that run down the wine and finish in a bright and persistent fashion. Give it two or three years to soften. Drink after 2023.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Lastly, the 2018 Viña Gena is all Tempranillo raised in French barrique and concrete egg. Its deep purple hue gives way to a medium-bodied, elegant, pure, almost pretty Rioja with ample cassis and lighter berry fruits as well as notes of spring flowers, spice, and tobacco. More about finesse and purity than overt power, it still has good concentration, wonderful balance, and a great finish. Drink it over the coming 10-15 years. Best After 2022
Rating: 93+
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Wine & Spirits
This wine might be a juice bomb if its dark tannic structure didn’t hold it so well. It delivers a raft of black-cherry flavor and cocoa notes with grace.
Other Vintages
2019-
Wine
Enthusiast -
James
Suckling
Viñas del Lentisco – Villota is a project owned, operated, and founded by Carmen Pérez-Garrigues and her father Ricardo Pérez-Villota, the fourth and third generations respectively of the Pérez-Villota family, a line of growers and vigneron that have been rooted to the San Rafael estate in Laserna, Laguardia, Rioja Alavesa on a meander of the Ebro Rivera since 1930. While their current bodega was founded in 2013, the Villota-Pérez family are one of the most important families in the 20th century history of Rioja.
In 1930, Ricardo Pérez-Pérez, native of Rioja, settled on the San Rafael estate in Laserna. At the time, the 160 Ha. estate was planted to vitis vinifera but was in considerable disrepair. It was Ricardo’s son, Ricardo Pérez-Calvet, an agricultural engineer by trade, who began recovery and resuscitation of the vineyard, and began producing wine for his own personal consumption. The family soon began selling grapes to local producers and quickly became one of the most important qualitative suppliers for Viña Real, CVNE’s Rioja Alavesa property.
In 1973, the Villota family cofounded Viñedos del Contino, Rioja's first single estate winery with José Ángel Madrazo and CVNE. The partnership remained for 40 years, until in 2013, the Pérez-Villota family left the partnership. The family’s inspiration is to continue their trajectory as vigneron and to continue and improve the tradition of vinification of honest and transparent wines that communicate the history of one of Rioja’s most historic and important vineyard estates.
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.