Winemaker Notes
Vinedos de Paganos La Nieta is a purple black color. Fine on the nose, it displays aromas of ripe red fruit, flowers, noble woods and spices. On the palate it is voluminous, intense, broad, with structure and outstanding balance.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Always a favorite of mine, the 2022 La Nieta didn't betray its floral, elegant and complex, insinuating character even in a year like 2022 and is aromatic, clean and expressive from the first minute, with purity and energy. Even the tannins are more elegant and polished than other 2022s. Perfumed, subtle and elegant, it developed a note of blood with time in the glass, which Marcos Eguren likes to call iodine. It transcends the quality of the year.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Named for a tiny parcel beneath El Puntido planted in rocks, 2022 La Nieta was planted in 1968 by winemaker Marcos Eguren’s father. Gravity-fed winemaking accentuates the quality of the hand-selected grapes, resulting in a gorgeously delicate wine of tremendous aromatics, both earthy and floral. Aging took place 16 months in new French oak Bordeaux barrels after barrel-fermentation in same. Supple with underlying grip and firm tannin, there's no doubt this is a full-bodied wine beneath the finesse.
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James Suckling
Floral yet restrained with good fruit, showing spices, minerals and some blackberries. Admirable tension on the palate with fine tannins that are firm and vertical, giving elasticity to the medium- to full-bodied palate. Very long. Nothing heavy. Rigorous berry selection by hand. 100% tempranillo.
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Wine Spectator
Finely knit and seamless, there's a fluid grace to this nonetheless powerful red. The muscular tannins show a creamy edge, allowing for fine integration with the concentrated flavor profile of boysenberry coulis, plum cake and herbed black olive. A skein of floral, anise and graphite notes winds through the lingering finish. Drink now through 2040.
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.