Winemaker Notes
Garnet red in color. Delicate nose, with good reduction and toasty notes alongslide rich licorice flavors and mountain herbs in this generous red. Elegant and fresh palate, with well-integrated tannins and a smooth finish.
Professional Ratings
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Vinous
The 2022 San Vicente, from a massal selection of the hairy-leaf Tempranillo planted in La Canoca, shows dark fruit aromas of blackberry and black plum, framed initially by oak before revealing spice notes of cinnamon and clove. Dry and compact on the palate, it has a lightly muscular feel and subtle chalky texture. The finish turns juicier, with deeper fruit expression. Structured yet expressive, this San Vicente is a wine of balance and purity, where fruit, oak and chalky texture come together in a persistent finish.
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Wine Spectator
A rich red in a fluid, elegant form, this offers a generous range of creamed black cherry and baked black currant fruit, with a fleshy, lightly plush feel to the palate, encompassing fine-grained, muscular tannins. Fragrant hints of ground espresso, herbed black olive, dark chocolate, tar and iron underscore the fruit notes and linger on the chewy finish. Drink now through 2040.
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James Suckling
Aromas of raspberries, toast, dark cherries, rosemary and lavender. Medium- to full-bodied with polished tannins, delineated fruit and freshness. Very balanced, with integrated yet evident oak. From La Canoca. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The single-vineyard varietal Tempranillo Peludo 2022 San Vicente fermented destemmed in oak vats—which they are replacing with smaller ones—with 22 days of maceration, pump-overs and malolactic fermentation in barrel. It matured in new French barriques for 20 months, during which time it was racked every four months. It's spicy and a little earthy/dusty, with notes of licorice. It's not a shy wine, hitting the scale at 14.5% alcohol, with a pH of 3.72 and five grams of acidity. It feels a little more developed than other vintages, perhaps a little more rustic, with notes of cloves and smoky bacon. These wines are bottled unfined and unfiltered, and there might be marginal bottle variations, as a second bottle was a little more focused.
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.