98 pts Wine Advocate (Luis Gutierrez)
The superb, complex and elegant 2020 Tabuerniga comes from a challenging year, as the vineyard was hit with hail. It fermented in open-top, 3,000-liter oak vats with indigenous yeasts and matured in 1,500-liter oak foudres for 14 to 16 months. The Taburniga terraces were the first to be harvested in 2020, from the sixth of October, and still the wine has a moderate 14% alcohol. It’s elegant, expressive, clean, focused and balanced, combining power and elegance, with fine tannins and a long finish. 3,960 bottles were filled in April 2022. They have six hectares here, and they only produce this limited number of bottles.Drinking Window: 2024 – 2034

I tasted the wines from Rioja from Telmo Rodrguez as part of the whole portfolio tasting a few months ago, and the notes were published in a specific article. But now that I have tasted most of the rest of the relevant wines from the region, I thought it would make sense to include those notes again here, for completeness of this article and context for the rest of the wines.

2020 was a challenging year, with mildew in Rioja, but they were lucky to escape the hail that didn’t hit Lanciego but affected the vineyards in Labastida (Taburniga and Beatas were affected). The harvest was earlier than in 2019, but they still started the sixth of October with the terraces of Taburniga. Pablo Eguzkiza told me it was a strange year for Tempranillo, with Graciano ripening earlier than Tempranillo.

Published:Feb 29, 2024

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Taburniga is another extraordinary place in the historic town of Labastida, where viticulture has been maintained for more than 1,300 years. A place where medieval wine presses carved in rocks amongst the vineyards watch over the heritage of former times. The scenery is stunning: a closed valley crossed by treads of vineyards, some of them abandoned, others cultivated, and many others recovered by us. Taburniga is a tiny and vertical valley. Its own isolation has predetermined shorter cycle varieties and a different expression. Sober and austere, but full of depth and elegance. At an altitude of between 540 and 630 meters, these narrow and historic terraces, cultivated organically and respecting the tradition, offer a magnificent wine. ~Winery