4.4 Vivino Stars (340+ Reviews)

Only 5,000 bottles of Viñedos de Páganos El Puntido Gran Reserva 2007 were produced way back when. There aren’t many left to go around.

Explore the region of Rioja with a meticulously crafted, single-vineyard Gran Riserva aged for 15 years. This limited-production El Puntido Gran Reserva was sourced from a single parcel of Tempranillo planted nearly 50 years ago. Calcareous and clay soils offer plenty of minerality, while cooler temperatures allow the fruit to ripen slowly and achieve levels of brisk, natural acidity. 2007 was a notably cold vintage and the grapes were harvested just in the nick of time before a big snowfall.

With this many years of aging in the book, you’d expect a price in the hundreds, but Vivino has it for an absolute steal at just $59.99!

Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate 96 Points
Putting my nose in the glass of the 2007 El Puntido Gran Reserva transported me to the classical Riojas from yesteryear. The wine has a fully developed nose with all the textbook descriptors of a good aged Rioja—forest floor, cigar ash, cold bonfire, truffle, cherries in liqueur, blonde tobacco, spices and iodine. But this is a classical Gran Reserva that has something that was not that traditional, and it comes from a single vineyard and matured in brand new French oak barrels for 28 months. But time in bottle has polished it (it was bottled in June 2010, almost nine years ago); the tannins are mostly resolved and it’s nicely textured. It has what I love about the best red wine—it’s salty rather than sweet, there is no room for sweetness here, and it’s sapid and tasty and has great balance and freshness. This is developing at a very slow pace and should continue doing so for a very long time. A great Gran Reserva in the making. Only 5,000 bottles were produced from 2007, a very cold vintage, when the grapes were harvested the last three days of October, and it snowed the first of November!