Winemaker Notes
The Eguren 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. Environmentally integrated agriculture.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
The single-vineyard Tempranillo 2023 La Nieta comes from the 1.75-hectare vineyard that names the wine. It was planted in 1975 on silt, clay and sandstone soils in Páganos (Laguardia) at 525 meters above sea level and is worked biodynamically (but not certified). The hand-destemmed grapes fermented in small 2,500-liter oak vats with yeasts selected from their vineyards and matured in new French oak barrels for 16 months. It's surprising how integrated the oak is, considering the new barrels, but the wine has such an intensity that it can take the oak and still come thorough as perfumed, elegant and nuanced, open and expressive. It comes in at 14.5% alcohol, with a pH of 3.7 and 5.88 grams of acidity and super fine tannins. This is often my favorite wine from the Eguren family, and this is a year of finesse and elegance.
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.