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Vega Sicilia

The Winery

Bodegas Vega Sicilia

"Life is a journey of discovery and Spain has given me some of the greatest wine discoveries in my professional life… they are committed to making great wines and the results are in the bottle."
- Robert Parker

A Spanish “First Growth”, Vega Sicilia is the most powerful producer hailing from the Ribera del Duero. The winery was purchased by the Alvarez family in 1982, after a history of changing hands several times. This is where it began to see prosperity, as quality and attention to detail rose with the new ownership. The property is over 2000 acres, only a fraction of which are planted to grapevines. Grapes grown include Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Malbec and Tinto Fino.

In reaction to the hard hit the Spanish wine industry took during the most recent economic downturn, Sicilia has renovated practices to get with the times and avoid another fiscal blow. The company has also founded new projects, including a new winery in Rioja in partnership with Baron Benjamin de Rothschild, who of course is part of the famed Rothschild family and owners of Mouton and Lafite. There are three wines available from Vega Sicilia, Unico, Reserva Especial and Valbuena.

www.vega-sicilia.com

View all wines by Vega Sicilia

Tasting Notes

WA94
This wine was re-tasted prior to this report with similar descriptors to my previous tasting for a report I published earlier this year and the score was the same. Cropped from an unusually cold and rainy vintage in which they will not bottle Único, the 2013 Valbuena is always released in its fifth year. It`s mostly Tempranillo with 5% Merlot that was put through a three- to four-day cold soak in the oak vats, where it fermented with indigenous yeasts and was pumped over. It matured in new and used 225-liter French and American oak barriques and also in 20,000-liter oak vats, where the larger vessels respect the fruit, especially in a more fragile vintage like 2013. It`s a very elegant and fresh Valbuena with a developed nose, quite classical with a fine texture, elegant tannins and a supple, long finish where the oak is still quite obvious. I liked it very much and consider it a triumph over the challenges of the year. 150,650 bottles and some larger formats were produced. It was bottled in June 2015.

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