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Wine Description
The Story
This red wine has no vintage and it is the tribute to tradition. A blend of three vintages, treated to an extended maturation in oak, assembled and bottle aged until eventual release. The winery here sought to continue a very old Spanish custom and also to combine the balance between vintages. Traditionally, in Spain, the very few wineries that had a bottling process prepared two types of wines in each harvest: the one of the current year and another wine without a specific harvest, which they called "Reserva Especial”. It was a mixture of wines from the best harvest from which the most representative wine of the winery was siphoned off.
Traditionally in Spain, the few wineries that bottled their own fruit, most sold straight from cask, made two types of wine, that of the current year and another without a specific harvest. Denoted Reserva Especial they represented an assemblage of the finest harvests, the most representative work of the winery. A cepage of varying proportions, Tempranillo and Merlot, Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon, the separate vintages of Vega Sicilia are treated to an extended maturation in a selection of new and seasoned, French and American oak casks and larger format vats for many years. The oak vessels themselves are a critical part of the vinification, coopered within the grounds of the wineworks.
The Reserva Especial is the wine with the greatest personality, it combines the complexity of the Único multiplied by different vintages and provides us with a huge range of aromas, pure elegance in a never-ending flow through the magic of a myth. Only the best Únicos are used to produce Reserva Especial; a mix of years, virtues, experiences and sentiments that serves only to profile the most profound essence of a unique and unrepeatable style, the Vega Sicilia style.
Wine Information
Unico Reserva Especial 2019 is composed of 59 barrels including vintages 2006, 2007 and 2009.
These wines are ready for drinking now but may potentially be stored for approximately 40-60 years if kept in optimum conditions 12-15 ºC at 60% relative humidity, and constant temperature, protected from direct light.
The NV 2014 Release Reserva Especial is a blend of different harvests, and therefore sold without a harvest year. This 2014 Release is a blend of 1994, 1995 and 2000, three very good years for Unico. Reserva Especial is the most Burgundian, classical and reminiscent of the old-style Vega Sicilias of yesteryear, a more subtle, baroque wine, aged for a long time in wood. It has a high level of complexity and a touch of volatility, which clearly tells you that this is not a style for everyone. This is not a fruit-driven wine. It’s a tertiary wine with a developed, complex bouquet consisting of hints of leather, earth, spices and iodine, and a subtle, elegant style. This was bottled in 2010 and is one of the best modern-day Reserva Especial vintages.
By the way now that we’re talking about the best Reserva Especial, if you ever have the chance to drink a bottle of the 1990 release – that is the best one I’ve ever had. 15,500 bottles of this prodigious wine were produced. Make sure you grab at least one! Drink now-2025. I tasted the latest three vintages of Valbuena, to get up to speed with what’s in the market. If there’s a wine in their collection that has seen a huge improvement since 1998, it is Valbuena, which had been kind of neglected since the launch of Alion in the early 1990s. For Valbuena, they do not want a second wine in the Bordeaux style. But with the competitive Alion breathing down its neck and the pressure of its big brother, it felt a bit out of place. So they decided to look back at the vineyards: they studied the soils and saw why Unico and Valbuena had been (empirically) produced from separated plots.