2021 Senorio de San Vicente Rioja 750 ml

Señorío de San Vicente was the first single-vineyard wine ever produced in La Rioja, and a blueprint for some of Spain’s greatest reds. It’s still the original—with Top 100 honors from Wine Enthusiast and Wine Spectator—and this edition proves it still belongs at the top.

With 100 points from Spanish wine authority Guía Proensa, it’s without a doubt one of the greatest wines ever made at the winery—the review says as much. Ditto from Wine Advocate, who called it “one of the finest vintages for San Vicente.” For good measure, Jeb Dunnuck added 97 points in a rave. 

We’ve been fans since Robert Parker called the wine, “one of the more stunning newer-styled Riojas to emerge from Spain,” imploring that “readers should take note, as I suspect prices will only go up.” Well, the price is still absurdly reasonable for a wine of this kind of renown—and a 100pt score to boot. Savvy collectors know what we have here, and they’ll be all over it.

Before Marcos and Miguel Angel Eguren, there were no single-vineyard wines in La Rioja. In 1985, the brothers carefully planted 45 acres of a rare Tempranillo clone in a tiny valley at the foot of the Sierra de Cantabria mountains—they named their vineyard La Canoca. The brothers spaced the vines more tightly than they ever had before, forcing them to send roots deep into the limestone-rich soil for nutrients, energy, and what would turn out to be immense, mineral-driven complexity. 

The fierce competition between vines yielded incredible concentration in Tempranillo, enhancing blackberry bass notes and red cherry intensity, while the unusually high altitude of the site—1,800 feet up on steep slopes—maintained freshness, keeping acids crisp and vibrant.

The hand-harvested grapes were like jewels and the Eguren brothers knew it. Instead of following the tradition of making Rioja from many different sites with multiple varieties, Marcos and Miguel Angel followed the example of the best single-vineyard wines of Bordeaux—Senorio de San Vicente was born, and so was a revolution in Spanish winemaking.