Bodegas El Nido 2021 El Nido Jumilla Red

Special price $112.49  |  regular $124.99

Special Library 10 Price Deal - Once they’re gone, they’re gone!

NET PRICED WINE - NO FURTHER DISCOUNTS

Winemaker Chris Ringland spent 18 vintages at Rockford Wines in Australia's Barossa Valley before launching his own tiny-production Shiraz label, which earned such glowing reviews from Robert Parker that it built an international cult following almost overnight. That reputation is what got him invited to Jumilla in 2001 by Miguel Gil, whose family had spent generations in a region better known for bulk wine than fine wine. Together they built Bodegas El Nido from scratch, sourcing fruit from old, low-yielding plots of Cabernet Sauvignon and Monastrell (the local name for Mourvèdre), some of the vines pushing toward a century old, grown at 800 meters on limestone and stony soil at the foot of the mountains.

Production is tiny by design, just a few thousand bottles a year (5000 bottles or ~420 cases), hand-harvested in small baskets to protect the fruit, aged two full years in French and American oak. El Nido is the flagship, roughly 70% Cabernet Sauvignon to 30% Monastrell, giving it more backbone than its sibling wine Clio. It's the kind of quality-obsessed project that, if it came out of Napa, would carry a $250+ price tag.

94pts Parker's Wine Advocate

Deep, dense cherry-purple in the glass. The nose opens with violets and ripe dark fruit, layered with baking spice, toasted oak, and a faint creaminess, plus notes of coffee and praline as it sits. On the palate it's full-bodied and concentrated, with blackberry, cassis, and a touch of cocoa carried by firm, structured tannins and real density. It finishes long, still gripping a bit at this stage but showing real polish underneath. This is a wine that's clearly built for the cellar, powerful and a little coiled up right now rather than fully unwound.

Decant time if drinking tonight:
Give it 2 to 3 hours in a decanter. This wine has the tannic structure to handle it, and that time will soften the grip and let the fruit and spice come forward. Pull the cork earlier in the day if you're planning dinner around it.

Cellar until:
For prime drinking window, hold bottles until roughly 2030 to 2033. That puts the wine at 9 to 12 years of age, enough time for the tannins to fully resolve and the fruit to shift from primary and jammy toward something more savory and integrated. It'll still have plenty of life beyond that too.

750ml