Winemaker Notes
-IWC
Intense red cherry, covered with ruby and garnet tones. Very clean. Enormous complexity in nose, highlights of red fruits with elegant lactic notes, spices, vanilla and rich aroma of toasted oak. Very fine and sexy. Flavorful, with a magnificent backbone and excellent structure. Dry, potent, complex, with great equilibrium. Smooth in the mouth with firm and ripe tannins. The finish leaves mineral notes, spices and red ripe fruit; a very pleasnt and elegant finish.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This single-vineyard estate-bottled Rioja has been a consistent winner in recent vintages. Not surprisingly, in such a great year as 2001, it performed fabulously well. Aged 20 months in primarily French oak, and bottled unfiltered, it is Spain’s version of a top-flight Pomerol. It boasts a deep ruby/purple color as well as an expressive bouquet of crushed red and black fruits, cedar, spice box, licorice, and smoked herbs. With great fruit, an opulent, full-bodied palate, tremendous purity as well as length, and abundant fruit and glycerin nearly concealing the moderate tannin, it should drink well for 8-10 years.
At a time when Rioja producers were entrenched in a classic style of production, Marcos and Miguel Angel Eguren strove to produce a Bordeaux styled single vineyard wine. The tradition in Rioja was blending vineyard and varieties, which lost the identity of single vineyards in the resulting wines. Marcos and Miguel Angel selected one of their finest and most unique vineyards, Finca La Canoca, to produce San Vicente. Located in a tiny valley at the foothills of the Sierra Cantabria, Finca La Canoca is 100% Tempranillo Peludo planted on extremely high-density trellises. The specific clone of Tempranillo, combined with the vineyard’s location produced a different expression that the Eguren family sought to highlight in this wine, that was built from the vineyard. The vineyard is located in a tiny valley on the northern fringes of what is considered to be an acceptable location for growing grapes in Rioja Alavesa. Any closer to the Sierra Cantabria mountain range, and the grapes would have trouble ripening. However, the altitude produces an elegant, lively wine with deep character and concentration.
In 1991, when they began working on the project, there were no single vineyard Rioja wines. The Eguren family were the first to combat this outdated ageing system, as there is nothing inherent about ageing that makes wine better. San Vicente is a unique wine which marries the modern intensity of fruit and concentration with classic Old-World style Rioja aromatics of mountain herbs and licorice.The philosophy of this project is one vineyard, one cellar, one wine.
Hailed as the star red variety in Spain’s most celebrated wine region, Tempranillo from Rioja, or simply labeled, “Rioja,” produces elegant wines with complex notes of red and black fruit, crushed rock, leather, toast and tobacco, whose best examples are fully capable of decades of improvement in the cellar.
Rioja wines are typically a blend of fruit from its three sub-regions: Rioja Alta, Rioja Alavesa and Rioja Oriental, although specific sub-region (zonas), village (municipios) and vineyard (viñedo singular) wines can now be labeled. Rioja Alta and Alavesa, at the highest elevations, are considered to be the source of the brightest, most elegant fruit, while grapes from the warmer and drier, Rioja Oriental, produce wines with deep color, great body and richness.