Winemaker Notes
Intense cherry. La Nieta displays aromas of mineral notes, ripe fruit leading to a full-bodied, voluminous, intense wine, with structure and an outstanding balance.
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
Halfway between Rioja and top Burgundy in style, joyous fruity expression and deep, multi-layered structure on the palate. Delicious now – difficult to resist drinking it, but it will become unforgettable in a few years’ time. An icon of postmodern Rioja. Drinking Window 2019 - 2035
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Jeb Dunnuck
From a single vineyard (1.7 hectares) of very shallow soils that stresses (and at times kills) the vines, the 2015 La Nieta is another 100% Tempranillo cuvée that was hand destemmed and aged 16 months in new French oak. Awesome notes of blueberries, violets, lead pencil, and hints of chocolate all emerge from this smoking good, rich, textured, balanced beauty. With fine tannin, excellent acidity, and a great finish, it's a gorgeous wine any way you look at it. Drink it anytime over the coming 20+ years.
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James Suckling
From a single vineyard (1.7 hectares) of very shallow soils that stresses (and at times kills) the vines, the 2015 La Nieta is another 100% Tempranillo cuvée that was hand destemmed and aged 16 months in new French oak. Awesome notes of blueberries, violets, lead pencil, and hints of chocolate all emerge from this smoking good, rich, textured, balanced beauty. With fine tannin, excellent acidity, and a great finish, it's a gorgeous wine any way you look at it. Drink it anytime over the coming 20+ years.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
I also tasted the powerful and concentrated 2015 La Nieta, which was very open, aromatic and expressive, even a little evolved for its young age. It's ripe, heady and generously oaked after 16 months in new French oak barrels, yet the fruit is in the foreground and the oak neatly folded into the fruit. The palate is juicy, fresh and velvety with an amazing backbone and acidity that holds it up and will help it to age gracefully in bottle. Most years, this is the most elegant wine from the wide portfolio produced by the Eguren family in their wineries in Rioja, Páganos, Sierra Cantabria and San Vicente. There is great finesse, balance and subtlety here, and there are even some floral notes coming out of the glass when the wine is left for a while.
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Wine Spectator
Cocoa, clove and mineral notes frame black plum and currant fruit in this expressive red. The full tannins are well-integrated, with gentle balsamic acidity, and give way to mineral, black olive and floral details on the long finish. Generous and harmonious. Drink now through 2030.
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.