Winery:  Bodegas Luis Cañas                                       

Region:  Rioja

Vintage:  2018                                               

Bottle:  75cl                                                   

Grape Varieties: 75% Tempranillo, 20% Graciano and 5% Viura

Type:  Red Wine, oak aged

Alcohol Volume:  14.5%

Serving Temperature:  16º - 18º

A single estate wine from Luis Cañas, born as a tribute to all their ancestors winegrowers, a generation of winegrowers that have worked, pampering and preserving the Rioja Alavesa’a vineyard in all its splendor, placing it among one of the most recognized wine-regions worldwide. With this wine they want to go back to the origins of the rioja Alavesa’s wine making, a wine that transmit all the diversity of the vineyard where it comes from, with the fruit as the main star of the wine. Finca El palacio is a small vineyard composed of three terraces, each one with different orientation and slope gradients, planted in 1969, mostly with Tempranillo vines and in smaller proportion Graciano and Viura.

Production: 

The harvest is done manually, the grapes go through a double selection process at the sorting table. The bunches of the three varieties are processed all together, as it used to be done in the past, then the grapes are fermented whole, to preserve the fruit aromas, in French oak vat and aged in 500-litres barrel where they spent 14 months. Bottled in February 2020, commencing then the stage of its ageing in bottle. Total production of 4355 bottles.

Tasting Notes: Clean, fresh and lively red wine, intense and elegant, with the liveliness of the fruit standing out, especially stone fruit aromas with a spicy nuance and aromatic plants, thyme and rosemary. On the palate shows a creamy rich character, good concentration, a marked personality accompanied all the way by a vibrant acidity.

Note:  Delicious upon release although it shows a good ageing potential.

Bodegas Luis Cañas is located in the heart of the highly acclaimed wine region known as the Rioja Alavesa. It is a family owned winery devoted to wine-making and viticulture for over two centuries, although it was only in 1970 with the commercialisation of its first bottled wines that the winery took off. Throughout the 1990s a bigger emphasis was given to the production of good quality wines, consequently experiencing a rise in sales and becoming what it is today: one of the leading wineries in the Rioja Alavesa.  

The winery owns 90 ha of vines and works another 200 ha under contract; all of them spread out over 870 mostly small sized parcels of advanced age and planted on poor chalky clay soil, and mostly on slopes and terraces. The result is low yields of excellent quality.