Vega Sicilia Tinto Valbuena 5, Ribera del Duero, Spain 1.5L 2018

Valbuena 5º is the purest expression of red wine at Vega Sicilia. It is aged between barrel and bottle over five years, giving rise to the wine's name: Valbuena 5º.

A fresher, Atlantic-influenced, somewhat more productive vintage. We had to be stricter during selection, but these vintages provided a touch of zing and verticality to the wines, which is wonderful. We were able to squeeze extraction somewhat more for the 2018, and we increased the influence of wood during the first year of ageing, particularly our American oak (5 %). During the second year of ageing, the vat worked on this complexity of nuances and particularly the elegance of the texture.

Valbuena 5º 2018 is a vertical, zingy, crystalline expression, full of nuances, with a seductive and unctuous texture.

" 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." The Wine Advocate 96