2018 Bodegas Pujanza Finca Valdepoleo Rioja 750 ml

Fans of the legendary Artadi will fall in love with the phenomenal 94+ point 2018 Bodegas Pujanza Finca Valdepoleo Rioja. Grown on 40-year-old vines on the winery’s flagship Valdepoleo vineyard in Laguardia, raised in French oak, and meticulously barrel-selected, it’s a gorgeous red that shows off its stellar terroir through the round, supple style that makes Rioja one of the world’s go-to regions for incredible red-wine value. 

Carlos San Pedro comes from a very long line of grapegrowers in Rioja Alavesa—five generations, to be exact. He was raised in the vineyard, running through the rows and among the barrels in his ancestors’ winery below the family home. In 1998, when he was 25, he decided to launch his own winery. 

Introduced in 2011, this bottling is a barrel selection from Finca Valdepoleo, an 18-hectare vineyard with an average vine-age of 40 years old. Valdepoleo sits at around 2000 feet, awash in fresh mountain breezes from the Sierra Cantabria, and each plot in the vineyard is managed and vinified separately by San Pedro. He harvests at different times according to each plot’s requirements, yielding a wine he says is “unique and unforgettable with each new vintage.”  

Just as Artadi’s wines are precise, modern, and aged in French oak, so is this red from Pujanza. And while the 14 months it spent in barrel legally entitles it to be called a Crianza, Carlos has no use for Rioja’s official designations: He knows the quality in the bottle simply speaks for itself.