Score: 92+/100
Amaren Winery (Bodegas) aims at producing wines of distinctively-high quality and “achieve excellence and pursue perfection”.
The wines are all released under the Rioja DOCa appellation and include: a barrel-fermented white, a vino de autor called ‘Angeles de Amaren’, a varietal Graciano, a Crianza red and the Reserva tasted here.
This Bodegas Amaren Reserva is made from 100% Tempranillo grapes, sourced from vines aged 60+.
It was matured for 18 months in new French oak casks.
Tasting notes
This Rioja wine comes in a dark and quite intense color, black to the core, red on the rim still with a touch of purple to it. Not a massively dense, but dark it is!
The nose in two words: fresh fruit… and fine oak!
Yes, there is plenty of dark cherry and ripe blackberry notes to the smell, lifted by some warmth from the alcohol.
But this is complemented by layers and layers of oaky richness and spices: vanilla, clove, nutmeg, dried banana. So rich, yet quite deep and intense to smell.
From there, the palate is overwhelmingly powerful.
OMG there is so much power and intensity packed into this!
A lot of ripe almost jammy red berry fruit, combined with enormous amounts of spices, and huge presence of the oak.
This is big, bold, and again, almost overwhelming with intensity.
Tannins are dense and overall smooth, though they are so concentrated they end up a little drying.
Big body, great acidity that does manage to preserve freshness to the wine.
Long powerful finish that will gain in complexity with age.
Overall
A Rioja wine with super-powers!
There is so much concentration and power packed into this wine, it is such an experience to taste!
A lot of everything we love in wine as concentrated as it gets, yet with an overall relative balance and elegance as all flavors are in sync.
Not for the faint-hearted though, and this would deserve to age another 5 to 10 years at least for the fruit beast to temper down a little and the complexity from aging to develop to another level which I’m sure it will.
Enjoy 🙂
Check Out Bodegas Amaren Reserva in Video
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