Dominio del Aguila
Canta la Perdiz
Ribera del Duero
2016

The producer

Terroir and very old vines – in this case at 800 metres near the village of La Aguilera (hence the name) – are the essence of the very fine wines from this estate. Rather than Bordeaux varieties the old vineyard has Tempranillo co-planted with Garnacha, Carinena, Bobal, Blanca del Pais and more. The vineyards are farmed organically, and the wines made traditionally, and the results are exceptional, even modern if old can become new.

The wine

The Dominio del Aguila Canta La Perdiz (“song of the partridge”) comes from the oldest vines in a single co-planted vineyard – mostly Tempranillo with Carinena and Bobal – and spends 30 months in oak. The labels quirkily show a blue electric guitar to denote a cooler vintage, a fiery piano for warm and an eagle for moderate. The Reserva is an extremely limited release in finer years.

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.