Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Aromas of spice, bark, dark fruits and perfumes. Very floral. Full-bodied, round and velvety with a clarity and transparency to the wine. Very, very long. A wine that shows youth and finesse for its age.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2006 El Puntido is purple-colored with a fragrant nose of wood smoke, espresso, Asian spices, black cherry, and blackberry. Dense, round and smooth-textured, this opulent effort is loaded with luscious fruit and has enough structure to evolve for 6-8 years. Drink this lengthy effort from 2016 to 2026.
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Wine Enthusiast
Another stellar El Puntido, this time with excellent concentration and full-load aromas of black fruit, leather, fine dried cheese and cola. The palate is tight, properly stretched and racy, with bursting black raspberry and cassis flavors. Coconut and resin on the finish is the first and only glaring announcement of oak. Drink now through 2014.
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Jeb Dunnuck
From steep, hillside slopes, the 2006 El Puntido Gran Reserva is all Tempranillo that spent 28 months in new Bordeaux barrels. Chocolate, black cherries, dried herbs, and lead pencil/graphite all give way to a rich, chocolaty, medium to full-bodied Gran Reserva that has terrific depth of fruit, ripe tannin, and a beautiful sweetness of fruit. It has another 10-15 years or more of prime drinking.
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Wine & Spirits
This is Sierra Cantabria’s project in Páganos, a town near Laguardia, from a vineyard planted in 1975. It produced a meaty 2006, with the umami savor of roasted pigeon and wild mushrooms. Scents of roses and high-toned spice relieve that full-on tannic richness, integrating into the wine’s supple texture.
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Wine Spectator
This rich red delivers a mouthful of black currant fruit, with strong notes of espresso, tar and mineral. Full-bodied, backed by muscular tannins and balsamic acidity. A modern style. Drink now through 2026.
El Puntido is an old word meaning ‘staircase landing’, similar to the shape that these lands form between the Sierra de Cantabria and the Ebro River depression. The single vineyard wines of Viñedos de Páganos represent the terrain that the vineyards are planted on. These wines have been in production since 2001 and the Eguren family have achieved quality vintage after vintage and have even lowered the production and increased quality over the last 12 years. Viñedos de Páganos was founded with the goal of highlighting the elegant, mineral expression of El Puntido and La Nieta, two phenomenal single vineyards, located in the ancient medieval town of Páganos.
El Puntido and Calados Del Puntido are produced from El Puntido single vineyard. Calados Del Puntido is the entry level wine, from a higher yielding portion of the vineyard. The family considers El Puntido to be the paradigm of a mineral expression of Tempranillo, which is caused by the high proportion of chalk in the soils at this site.
The family strove to produce a world class wine from the miniscule Finca La Nieta, a vineyard with shallower, poorer soils, and a superior microclimate than the neighboring El Puntido vineyard. The product is Viñedos de Páganos’ flagship wine, La Nieta. The Eguren family wanted to use this vineyard to display the subtlety and elegance that Tempranillo can represent, and they have achieved this with La Nieta.
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.