Der Valbuena aus dem Hause VEGA SICILIA gilt schon seit einigen Jahren nicht mehr einfach nur als Zweitwein des Hauses, sondern als eine gepflegte weitere Marke des grossen Hauses...
The Wine Advocate | Jan 31, 2023 | Luis Gutierrez
The 2018 Valbuena comes from a cooler vintage with good yields that required sorting and selecting in search of a happy and vertical version of Valbuena, pushing a little more and giving the wine a little more oak, especially American (5%). It was produced with 96% Tinto Fino and 4% Merlot that went through a three- to four-day cold soak and fermented with indigenous yeasts followed by malolactic in stainless steel. The élevage was in new and used 225-liter oak barrels and 21,000-liter oak vats. It has 14.5% alcohol and a pH of 3.8 and 4.78 grams of acidity (tartaric), so it's ripe and with mellow acidity that gives it a mellow mouthfeel. This is a very spicy vintage for Valbuena, getting closer to the style of Único (while at the same time I felt the 2018 Pintia from Toro was getting closer to the aromatics of some vintages of Valbuena, like 2010). It was a late-ripening year with a tendency toward freshness in the wines. The palate is medium to full-bodied, with very fine tannins that made the wine nicely textured and very elegant. There is a lot of regularity in the Valbuena of the last few years, here with more tension and freshness of the 2017, a little more balsamic even. 180,580 bottles, 5,528 magnums and some larger formats produced. It was bottled in May 2021.
Vega Sicilia has increased the capacity to age wine in large oak vats to 75,000 liters and are making a detailed study of their non-saccharomyces yeasts. They are the most prestigious winery in Spain and one of the creators of the Ribera del Duero appellation. They work 210 hectares of vineyards in 55 separate plots and produce between 240,000 and 325,000 bottles, depending on the conditions of the vintage. I tasted the wines to be released during 2023, and I also tasted all the Único magnums ever produced, which are published in a separate article. I was very pleasantly surprised by the 2013 Único.