Wine Advisor
Vega Sicilia, Tinto Valbuena 5 2013
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Description
Tasting notes
Reviewed by: Luis Gutiérrez
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.
Reviewed by: Luis Gutiérrez
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.
Reviewed by: Josh Raynolds
Brilliant ruby-red. A complex and highly expressive nose evokes fresh cherry, cassis, pipe tobacco and pungent flowers, and subtle vanilla and smoky mineral flourishes build in the glass. Sweet, penetrating and energetic on the palate, offering incisive dark berry, floral pastille and spicecake flavors that take a turn to finer red fruits on the back half. In a lithe, graceful style, showing superb finishing delineation and an impressively long, sweet, floral- and spice-laced finish. Note that there will be no Unico bottled from the 2013 vintage.
About the Producer
The wines produced by Bodegas Vega-Sicilia are known as the "kings of wine" in the Spanish wine world and are among the most admired in the world. It has become Spain's most recognizable and expensive wine for over a century. In 1864, the wealthy Eloy Lecanda family acquired a vineyard on the banks of the Duero River in northwestern Spain and named it Bodegas de Lecanda (later "Bega"). Winery of Sicilia"), began a complex and wonderful saga. As early as the early days of the establishment of the garden, the Lacanda family introduced international grape varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Malbec from Bordeaux, France, to make up for the Spanish ace grape Tempranillo. This is also the beginning of the introduction of French varieties in Spain. At the end of the 19th century, the Vega Sicilia winery began producing its first wines, bottled and sold exclusively in the Rioja region. At this time, the Vega Sicilia winery was not well-known and the production was very limited, and it did not start to improve until the 20th century. Vega Sicilia Winery was originally called "Lacanda Winery", and later changed its name to "Antonio Herrero Winery". It was not until the early 20th century that the current winery name was finally determined. In the 1920s, some vintages from Vega Sicilia were featured in international wine festivals. From the 1940s to the 1960s, Don Jesus Anadon, a highly influential and legendary winemaker in Spain, was responsible for brewing many high-quality vintages. Until 1964, when the winery was sold to a Neumann family from the Czech Republic or Venezuela, Anato continued to work at the winery. In 1982, El Enebro S.A., a company of the Alvarez family, purchased the winery and vineyards of Vega Sicilia from Newman, and since then Vega Sicilia has been taken over by the Alvarez family . After the new owner entered the vineyard, he took a series of reform measures, including formulating a long-term development plan for the winery, adding new brewing equipment, increasing efforts to develop overseas markets, and continuing the position of chief winemaker Anato. This was seen as the most important move, and at the same time, Mariano Garcia, a young winemaker who was already well-known at the time, was hired as Anato's assistant, a decision that also created Vega Sicilia. After 20 years of glory. The current CEO of Vega Sicilia is Pablo Alvarez, an energetic and visionary manager. The winery still practices innovative winemaking techniques and produces wines of superior quality and inspiring. In addition, the estate's owner has started an exciting new project in the Toro appellation. The vineyards of Vega Sicilia are located on a 700-meter-high hillside on the south bank of the Duero River. The natural environment there is extremely harsh, with cold winters and frosty springs. It is such a harsh natural environment forging the tough nature of the vine. In addition, the sun is abundant, and the temperature difference between day and night is very large, so that the grapes can maintain sufficient acidity while ripe, and the wines produced have both good ripeness and a strong sense of structure. The vineyard has calcareous clays with excellent drainage and deep potential, ideal for growing grapes. The average age of the vines is more than 30 years, and the age of the vines in some gardens is even more than 70 years old. At the same time, in order to make the grapes get more nutrients, Vega Sicilia also pays great attention to controlling the planting amount per hectare, and the planting density is extremely high. Low, about 2,200 plants per hectare. This figure is already much lower than the regulations of the Spanish D.O., and even lower than the planting density of the Bordeaux Grand Crus. Since its establishment in 1864, Vega Sicilia Winery has been using traditional winemaking techniques in order to produce wines with the least human interference. The fermentation of the wine takes place in oak barrels, stainless steel barrels and epoxy-lined concrete vats, followed by malolactic fermentation in epoxy-lined concrete vats. The winery also uses French and American casks of varying sizes. The Unico is quite flexible, typically aged in small oak barrels (new and old) for 2-4 years, and then transferred to large oak barrels for blending and purification. Unique Collections are only made in the best vintages, and some vintages (like 1970) are said to be kept in wooden barrels for up to 16 years.
