Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
My favorite wine from the Eguren family is usually the single-vineyard La Nieta, which in the cooler 2016 vintage delivers one of the freshest vintages of the wine with the 2016 La Nieta. This was first produced in 2004, so they've had 12 years of experience to vinify and age these grapes from 1.78 hectares planted in 1975 with a massal selection at 525 meters in altitude on very stony soils. It matured in new French oak barrels for 16 months. This might very well be the finest wine ever produced by the Eguren family, a wine of great finesse, elegance and poise, still insultingly young and tender but with gobsmacking balance and harmony, great freshness and a textured palate with sophisticated tannins. It has the expressive nose of the 2016 vintage, an explosion of flowers and wild berries, some aromatic herbs and plenty of spices. There is still a bit of oak on the finish, but it should be integrated with a little more time in bottle. A monumental Rioja in the making, a red of great finesse. 5,000 bottles were filled in August 2018.
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.