Vega Sicilia
Alion
Ribera del Duero
2016

About

The producer

Vega Sicilia, Spain's premier and most prestigious wine estate, is situated in Ribera del Duero. Founded in 1864 by Don Eloy Lecanda y Chaves, who brought cuttings of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Malbec from Bordeaux, the estate combined these with Spain's signature grape, Tinto Fino (also known as Tempranillo), in the arid soils of Ribera.

The winery began building its formidable reputation in 1903 under Antonio Herrero's ownership, garnering numerous awards both domestically and internationally. The estate changed hands several times before being acquired by the current owners, the Álvarez family, in 1982.

Vega Sicilia's success is rooted in its meticulous approach. In the vineyard, they employ low yields, green harvesting, and careful selection during harvest. In the winery, wines are aged in a variety of containers—including French and American oak, both new and old, as well as small barrels and large vats—to enhance complexity. Despite the prolonged barrel aging, the fruit remains vibrant and not overly oaky, showcasing the superb quality of its raw materials. This careful process ensures that Vega Sicilia's wines are consistently complex, balanced, and of exceptional quality, making it a benchmark for fine wine in Spain and beyond.

The wine

Wine produced using the Tinto Fino variety. The grapes are harvest by hand in 12-kg boxes and are taken immediately to the winery to the sorting tables. Fermentation takes place in wooden tanks under controlled temperatures until a good polyphenolic structure is obtained which will provide the generous colour and firm structure that makes up part of the personality of this wine; and finally the ageing of between 12 and 14 months, depending on the characteristics of the vintage, is performed in full in new French oak Bordeaux barrels. These barrels, from the leading Bordeaux firms, are a significant investment in oak as, harvest after harvest, all the wine that is produced in Alión will be aged in new barrels that, after the wine is decanted to be bottle, will not be used again by the winery.

Once the wine is removed from the barrels, it will remain no less than 15 months in the stillness of the bottle, where it will end up assembling all the primary aromas of the fruit with the hues from its delicate ageing, resulting in an intense, complex and fleshy wine, but where the elegance is a distinguishing feature and hallmark of the winery.

Information

Critics Scores

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.