This is very powerful and rich with amazing depth of fruit and ripe tannins. Full body. Round and chewy tannins. Super depth and beauty in this pure tempranillo. Needs time in the cellar. Better after 2021.

With six years of ageing the wine is beginning to spread its wings. An expressive style, it's full of smoky balsamic aromatics. Modern, with black fruits, blueberries, liquorice and dried herbs. It's a concentrated, polished style, which just needed time to settle. The fruit comes from close to Haro, in Villalba, from vines that were pre-selected for their low yield and freshness.

Same as with Viña Real's, I hadn't tasted the more modern Tempranillo aged in new French oak from CVNE for a long while, and the wine to be released now is also from 2016, so I tasted the 2016 Real de Asúa. This wine was first produced in 1999 and matured in barrique for 18 months. It has a mixture of modern and traditional Rioja, but here I find more tannins and a little more influence from the aging in barrel. It's obviously young and should improve with a little more time in bottle. 3,000 bottles were filled in January 2018.