Contino Viña del Olivo 2021

TASTING NOTES

• Appearance: Cherry colour with purple edges and a high layer.
• Nose: Very good intensity even when glassed, combining hardwood spices with ripe black fruit of blackberry and plum type, but with notes of cassis and a balsamic background reminiscent of minty chocolate and black pepper.
• Palate: Balanced and tasty, broad and fleshy on the palate, good final length and powerful fruit in the retronasal. Great wine that will still grow in bottle until about 2025.

ELABORATION

Manual selection of the best bunches from the Olive Grove plot (a specimen close to 700 years old) which, harvested in boxes with great care, fermented in 100 hl. French oak vats at controlled temperatures for 10 days. The malolactic fermentation takes place in a tank, and once this is finished, the wine is taken to new and second-use barrels of French (80%) and American (20%) origin where it remains for 14 months. Finally, it goes into a wooden vat for 2 months until it is bottled.

HISTORY

Contino, the first château in La Rioja, was founded in 1973 by the century-old CVNE winery and the owners of the 62-hectare estate located in the Rioja Alavesa. The history of the property dates back to the sixteenth century and is recorded in its very name. The "contino" was the officer in charge of a guard of a hundred soldiers who had watched over the royal family since the time of the Catholic Monarchs. Tradition has it that San Gregorio, the patron saint of the vineyards, passed through the lands of this same Rioja estate, and so his figure appears in the anagram of this winery, and lends his name to 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 carried out with an individualized system of harvesting grapes, coming only from the same vineyards that surround the old manor house and their origin from the different plots is marked. The perfect combination of soils, Atlantic-Mediterranean climate and refined technique have made Contino, more than thirty years after its first vintage, a benchmark both inside and outside Spain.

WINE CELLAR

At Viñedos del Contino they coexist in perfect harmony, tradition and innovation. Modern winemaking hall, with selection table and small tanks, adapted to the plots and varieties. Fermentation tanks with reduced capacity collect the production of each plot of the estate individually and, depending on the characteristics of the grape, it will be processed in one way or another.

Sixteenth-century cellars store the wines in the best conditions of temperature and humidity.