El Puntido Gran Reserva

The 2013 El Puntido Gran Reserva started very shy and closed; it took time to open up to slowly unfurl the more tertiary notes, despite its youth. It reveals great complexity and nuance. It's a triumph over the adverse conditions of a challenging year like 2013, a year with a lot of rain and a cold summer with lots of cloudy days when people thought the grapes were not going to ripen. It has a classical nose with notes of cherries in liqueur, cigar ash, decayed leaves and truffles with the spiciness from the 28 months in new French oak barrels and a lactic touch. The palate is polished, sleek and elegant. In 2018, they changed the fermentation vessels from stainless steel to concrete, but we'll have to wait a few years to see that... 5,000 bottles produced. It has been in bottle since March 2016. It should be long lived and make old bones.

I was greatly impressed by the 2008 El Puntido Gran Reserva, a wine with a more traditional profile than the majority of wines from the Eguren family. At age 14, the wine is glorious, still young and with a mixture of primary and more developed notes. It goes more in the direction of the old wines, with balsamic notes of incense and cedarwood, mushrooms and some berries and herbs. It's complex and elegant, with fully resolved tannins. This was bottled back in May 2011, so it's been in bottle for over a decade, and the texture shows it. It has 14% alcohol and a pH of 3.55. This matured in brand-new French oak barrels for 28 months, and the wine has absorbed the oak completely.