Red Wine
Tempranillo
Sustainable
Dry
Residual Sugar: 1.1 g/l
750ml
14.3% alc./vol

Bideona Laguardia (L4GD4) DOC Rioja Alavesa 2020

Rioja, Spain

94 points - Vinous

$53.95per bottle ($647.40per case)
12 bottles per case

Floral & Fresh

This product is offered online and at select LCBO locations for a limited time through Vintages Cellar Collection. For help locating stock, feel free to contact us at info@npwines.com.

Bideona’s village wine series is intended to showcase the differences in character among the great, historic wine villages of Rioja Alavesa. This series also highlights a senseless regulation of the Denominación de Origen, which allows the use of a village name by the location of the winery – the building – and not the vineyards. Despite having full traceability of each vineyard parcel, Bideona cannot legally use village names on the labels. As a clever workaround, they have substituted all village names with acronyms that they have registered as brands. Thus, ‘Laguardia’ becomes L4GD4. This Tempranillo field blend comes from old vineyards planted at 1,400 feet above sea level overlooking the Ebro Valley. Ripening tends to be the earliest among Bideona’s villages and the wines are the most elegant and perfumed in the village wine series. Laguardia is also the most approachable and gastronomic wine in this series, due to its lighter, velvety tannins and juiciness on the palate.

The grapes were hand harvested in small crates and then manually sorted on a sorting table before being de-stemmed. Alcoholic and malolactic fermentations were carried out in stainless-steel tanks via a mix of indigenous yeast and a house cultured yeast strain. Gentle pump-overs were done to maximize personality without high extraction of color or tannins. The wine was pressed off the skins and was sent to a mix of stainless-steel, concrete, new oak, and used oak for 12 months of aging. It was bottled with a coarse filtration and very gentle sulfur addition. No fining.

About the Winery

Bideona

Bideona owns or manages over 300 parcels of extraordinary vines in villages throughout the Rioja Alavesa, the coolest, smallest and most Atlantic sub-zone of Spain’s most famous wine region.

The vineyards of the Rioja Alavesa are defined by parcels of old bush vines planted on terraces or hillside slopes with a high percentage of limestone. Located in the foothills of the Sierra Cantabria, Bideona’s vines have an average age of 50 years and many were planted in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, before high-yielding clones became available.

Bideona puts the focus firmly on terroir by making each wine in its Vino de Pueblo range as a field blend of Tempranillo and other native varieties from plots in an individual village. Each is named with an acronym – L3Z4 for Leza, L4GD4 for Laguardia, S4MG0 for Samaniego and V1BN4 for Villabuena – owing to DOCa Rioja regulations that only allow village names to be marked if both the winery and the vineyard are in the same location.

“Bideona’s reason for existence is to make wines that show the personality of the Rioja Alavesa and its historic wine villages” states company co-founder and director, Andreas Kubach MW. “We have access to a wealth of diverse plant material in our parcels of old vines, which we believe contributes to the complexity of the wines as well as the differences between villages.”

Press Reviews

Vinous

94 points - Vinous

The 2020 L4GD4 is 100% Tempranillo sourced from Laguardia, Rioja Alavesa. Aged in concrete vats and foundres, this cherry-red wine reveals ripe balsamic notes alongside herbs and black fruits. Dry and silky, with fine-grained tannins, it features a vibrant, refreshing core and a mouthwatering, energetic finish. This is unique, flavorful, primary Rioja. Also of note, it's clever, elusive name subtly alludes to the place without explicitly mentioning it, adhering to the labeling regulations of Rioja.