Vega Sicilia Único 2015
A living legend that reaches its peak in a vintage rated as Excellent
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A wine that must be tried at least once in a lifetime; a true masterpiece for aging, with timeless elegance and a depth that captivates from the very first glass.
Consumption features
Serving temperature
General features
Type of wine
Region
Grape variety
4% Cabernet Sauvignon, 96% Tempranillo
Capacity (cl)
75
Bottling
Mayo de 2021
Alcohol content (% vol.)
14.5
General Information
Vega Sicilia Único 2015 bears the signature of Spain's most iconic winery and one of the most respected in the world: Vega Sicilia, founded in 1864. Long before the D.O. Ribera del Duero existed, its wines were already a cult object. Inspired by the great red wines of Bordeaux, this historic house has elevated Spanish wine to the highest level, with noble reds that combine power, finesse, and a legendary aging capacity.
Vega Sicilia Único 2015 is made from tempranillo and cabernet sauvignon grapes from the estate's best plots, with very low yields and manual harvesting in small boxes. Fermentation takes place in wooden vats, followed by an extraordinary aging process: more than 10 years in French and American oak barrels, wooden vats, and bottle. This long evolution gives it an aromatic complexity and structure that make it a unique wine, as its name suggests. In the words of Vega Sicilia's winemaker, Gonzalo Iturriaga, who debuted with this vintage at the winery, "2015 is a very expressive version from the very beginning. On the palate, it is a generous, opulent, juicy vintage, and at the same time, it maintains the characteristic elegance of the house. It is a wine with which I have learned why Vega Sicilia is so great."
Once again, critics recognize the unparalleled quality of this red wine with a score of 97 points from Robert Parker and his publication Wine Advocate and the Guía Peñín de los Vinos de España.
Creators' opinion
It was a special vintage, as it was my first harvest at Vega Sicilia. I understood that there is something genuine at the Vega Sicilia estate, as when tasting the grapes, I felt the concentration, the power, and at the same time the elegance and silkiness. This is the foundation for creating an extraordinary wine. When you taste that concentration, you understand why such a unique aging process is needed at Vega Sicilia: five years in wood, with a first phase of around a year and a half in barrels shaping the wine, and a second phase of about three and a half years in wooden vats that provide the wine with another dimension.
The winery
Vega Sicilia is the most renowned winery in the entire history of Spanish wine. The average quality of its wines has remained at the highest level throughout its more than one hundred and fifty years of history, and its legend has survived—and will continue to survive—generations of winemakers and owners. The current owners, the Álvarez Mezquíriz family, purchased the winery in 1982 and have managed to maintain a consistent approach without abandoning evolution or even avant-garde innovation, two essential tools to stay at the top nowadays.
Likewise, the brilliant work of the various technical directors of Vega Sicilia in recent decades has made it possible for the wines of this legendary winery to remain at the highest level. In 1998, Xavier Ausás, at just 28 years old, took over the oenological reins left by a heavyweight like Mariano García. Since August 2015, Gonzalo Iturriaga de Juan has replaced Xavier Ausás as Technical Director of the Tempos Vega Sicilia group.
The winery owns 210 hectares of vineyards, 95% of which are planted with tinto fino (tempranillo) and 5% with cabernet sauvignon and merlot. The vines have an average age of 33–36 years, are spread across 19 soil types—mainly sandy-loam and clay-loam—and are influenced by a continental climate with Atlantic influence.
Vega Sicilia is a luxury that only a few can access. Its extremely limited production forces the distribution of its wines through allocations, and if the winery detects that these allocations are being used to resell the product to other businesses, they cancel them without hesitation. Currently, the parent company (which has its own cooperage) markets three red wines: Valbuena 5º Año, Vega Sicilia Único (with a minimum of seven years of aging in oak barrels), and Vega Sicilia Único Reserva Especial, made with a coupage of three—sometimes two—vintages of Único.
The average production is:
150,000/200,000 bottles of Valbuena 5º Año
50,000/100,000 bottles of Único
18,000 bottles of Único Reserva Especial