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  • Country ranking ?

    108
  • Producer ranking ?

    35
  • Decanting time

    3h
  • When to drink

    now to 2035
  • Food Pairing

    Skirt Steak with Pomegranate Sauce

The Tb points given to this wine are the world’s most valid and most up-to-date evaluation of the quality of the wine. Tastingbook points are formed by the Tastingbook algorithm which takes into account the wine ratings of the world's best-known professional wine critics, wine ratings by thousands of tastingbook’s professionals and users, the generally recognised vintage quality and reputation of the vineyard and winery. Wine needs at least five professional ratings to get the Tb score. Tastingbook.com is the world's largest wine information service which is an unbiased, non-commercial and free for everyone.

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Parker: The 1999 Unico delivers an ethereal bouquet of smoke, pencil lead, violets, leather, incense, black cherry, and blackberry. Already complex on the palate thanks to its lengthy upbringing, this opulent wine has layers of black fruit flavor, impeccable balance, and another twenty years of life ahead. One of the perquisites of reviewing Spanish wine is the opportunity to taste the wines of Vega Sicilia once a year. The Valbuena cuvee receives three years in barrel and two years in bottle prior to release.

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The Story

Of the 1,000 hectares making up the Vega Sicilia estate, 210 are used for wine growing, and there are 19 soil-types divided for management purposes into 52 plots with very specific characteristics. The influence of the flow of the river Duero and the passage of time have been vital in forming these soils.

70 of these hectares are employed to produce Unico. A unique, magical estate which, along with extraordinary management of the vineyard, enables the production of legendary wines.

The Unico ageing process is probably the world's longest, since it runs for at least ten years from the barrel to the bottle. 225-litre barrels of French and American wood, both new and used, and 20,000-litre tanks. A long complex process for a great wine.

The flagship wine Unico is a wine for all eternity. Only a handful of terroirs worldwide are able to match wine's extraordinary ageing capacity. This is a wine of inimitable style, mature, tremendously elegant and silky, in which the ageing process brings the mystique of the essence to the surface.

The qualities of the Tempranillo and Cabernet Sauvignon in different proportions are assembled to perfection in this wine. Each provides a differentiating factor that makes the wine great in every vintage.

The vines are grown on plots where the land is located at the point between the slopes down from the wasteland and the alluvial plain. The soil nearest the surface is made out of fine colluvial deposits from the hillside with small fragment of limestone. There is abundant quartz gravel deeper down in a sandy main soil. There are many angular limestone boulders on the surface.

Red wine made in controlled fermentation using native yeast in wooden tanks. Malolactic fermentation also takes place in wood.  After its fermentation, its goes through what is probably the world's longest ageing of a red wine, almost 10 years between wood and bottle. The different stages take place in different types of barrel: American and French wood, new and used 225-litre barrels, 20,000-litre vats, each batch is what determines the type of wood and the time spent in each container. After the stage in the wood, it is aged in the bottle to complete a long and complex ageing process. It will normally spend 6 years in wood and three in the bottle.

The different elements in its preparation are fine-tuned in the search of the master line that has guided the wine. Único remains true to a clear and well-defined style, with an inimitable character and style; elegance, strength, ageing capacity... A unique and timeless taste that has elevated it to among the aristocracy of the great classic wines.

It offers an infinite complexity that is gradually revealed, in every sip, the palate immensely silky and elegant, and has an ageing capacity that only a handful of wines in the world can claim.

Bodegas Vega Sicilia Unico is still “a prophet in its own land”, Spain, and only a small part of the production leaves the country to be sold abroad. The production of Unico varies from 30.000 to 100.000 bottles depending on the year. The commercial success of Unico is nevertheless decided beforehand regardless of the amount produced, since each vintage is already sold out before the bottling. Yet 700 people are queuing for Unico´s customer list hoping that some of the customers of long standing would give up their place, or forget to order anything for two years, which automatically drops them from the list. The list of the privileged subscribers does not exceed 4,000, and they naturally remain anonymous. Pablo Alvarez, manager of Vega Sicilia, is conscientious when it comes to impartiality towards long standing loyal customers, even though the balance between the company´s firm commercial policy and influential quarters wanting wines outside its customer list is not always easy to maintain.

For example, when Queen Elizabeth II visited Spain a few years ago, the British Embassy wanted Vega Sicilia to represent Spain´s wine tradition at the dinner arranged to honour the Queen. Although the order had been duly placed and at decent notice, the estate was able to deliver only four cases for the dinner, of course with all manner of apologies for not having been able to meet the order in full.
Respecting loyal customers has been a matter of tremendous importance for Bodegas Vega Sicilia throughout its history. When Jesús Anadón was the estate steward the United States´ importer paid a visit and told him that in his faraway homeland the demand was more than 200.000 bottles. As he determinedly insisted that his order be multiplied, the inimitable Jesús stated without blinking an eye that the limit was 500 bottles and no more, and this was his last word.

Unico is a unique wine, and one of the great Spanish classics. It is the signature wine of Vega Sicilia and is taken from some of the oldest vines available. The wine is mostly Tempranillo and Cabernet Sauvignon.
– The Unico wine is produced only in exceptional years, that is, in the course of one decade two or three vintages are "sacrificed" in order to maintain the high quality. It is right that the effect of the harvest is present in each wine: then the -81, -74, -75, -66. -65 and -62 are Unicos in aromatical complexity reaching baroque extremes and the -70, -89, -62, -42 and -22 ones are based on the tannic power reaching to be perpetual wine” , said Mr. Alvarez to me when we asked his personal opinion best vintages of Unicos

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Wine Information

UNICO 1999 / 90%TINTO FINO, 10%CABERNET SAUVIGNON.
Once the process of fermentation had been completed, the wine remained in large-capacity wooden vats for 21 months. It then matured for 20 months in new casks, 17months in semi-new casks and 24 months in large-capacity wooden vats. The remaining time was spent in bottle until being released in 2009.

96.159 Bordeaux bottles, 2.596 Magnum and 157 Double Magnum.

11th October. Intense rains oblige to stop the harvest till the 1st November. The harvest was finished on the 16th November with Cabernet Sauvignon.

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Average Bottle Price

2015 2013 2010
309€ +24.1% 249€ +18.0% 211€

This data comes from the FINE Auction Index, a composite of average prices for wines sold at commercial auctions in 20 countries. The average prices from each year have been collected since 1990. This chart plots the index value of the average price of the wines.

Tasting note

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Written Notes

Ruby. Blackberries, vanilla and spices, dark fruits, liquorice, intense nose, spicy. Fresh acidity, ripe tannins, anise, liquorice and spices, blackberries, dates and figs, just showing more age. 92

  • 92p

Vega Sicilia Unico 1999/ Psychologically very tough harvest. They started to pick on 10 Oct but had to stop when it rained heavily on 12 Oct. Temperatures fell. We went through the vineyard to tidy up to avoid rot. Started picking again 1-10 Nov, one of the latest harvests ever which cost them a third of production. Confident that their 1999 is the best in the region in terms of ageing potential. Not yet ready. With 1998 it suffers from misunderstanding because when they were bottled they were pretty brutal and austere but both wines are now less tense (stark contrast to the more generous 2005 and 2004 which are arguably less representative of our region). Dark ruby. Mellow on the nose smells much more evolved than the 2000. Good freshness and tightness. Lots of acidity and balsamic notes on the finish. Just starting to charm though it seems to have the structure for a much longer life. 17.5 points

  • 91p

Dark garnet red colour with almost black core. Excellent nose displaying hints of ripe fruit, gingerbread spices and roasted aromas. Excellent length on the palate with youthful character and promising potential.

  • 92p
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Information

Origin

Valbuena, Ribera el Duero

Vintage Quality

Excellent

Value For Money

Very good

Investment potential

Good

Fake factory

None
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