San Vicente

D.O.Ca. Rioja

San Vicente de la Sonsierra, La Rioja

100% Tempranillo Peludo

La Canoca Single Cru

1985

Practicing organic dry farmed viticulture with certain selective biodynamic practices. Vineyards trained as spur-pruned goblet vines as well as high density trellises. Manual work and harvest, with no mechanization whatsoever.

Calcareous clay soils that are typical to the Sonsierra Riojana. Limestone rich clay soils that are sandwiched between large slabs of lime-sandstone mother rock.

Continental with heavy Atlantic influences that are moderated by the Sierra Cantabria.

The grapes undergo rigorous double-manual sorting, both before and after destemming. 100% of the clusters are destemmed, but not crushed. Fermentation is carried out in 20,000L French oak vats (neutral) and is inoculated with neutral yeasts that have been isolated and cultured from the family's vineyards and cellars.

20 months in new barrique, 90% French and 10% American. Racked every four months.

In the early 1980’s, Marcos and Miguel Angel Eguren requested that their father scour the family’s 100 Ha of vineyards in San Vicente de la Sonsierra for the lowest yielding individual vines of Tempranillo. In 1985, the family planted the 18 Ha. La Canoca single vineyard in San Vicente to a massal selection of these low yielding plants. As the vineyard took shape, the vines all shared similar ampelographic characteristics – smaller berries, looser clusters, and a velvety bloom on the subsurface of the leaves. The family was mocked for planting a selection of their “worst vines.” When the first vintage of San Vicente was commercialized almost 10 years later, the family endured more derision when the wine was priced above any Reserva in the appellation. The following year, the wine was released without ageing classification, becoming Rioja’s first single cru ageing declassified wine. For lovers of the Eguren family’s wines, San Vicente tends to elicit a special emotion as one of Rioja's first exhaustive projects to release a premium cuvée that expressed the character of a specific vineyard cru. Today, San Vicente is recognized as one of the appellations most important modern classics.