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“I was lucky enough to fall in love with this profession,” begins Pablo Álvarez. The businessman—an impeccably tailored three-piece suit—has been at the helm of the iconic Ribera del Duero estate for more than 30 years. Bought by his family for 450 million pesetas in 1982, it was entrusted to him when he was only 29, and he propelled its three cuvées—“Reserva Especial” (a blend of three vintages of “Único”), “Único,” and “Valbuena”—into the coveted realm of mythical, allocation-only wines.
The agricultural estate comprises 210 hectares of vines set within 1,000 hectares of trees and cereal crops. The 140 hectares farmed by Vega Sicilia lie in the western part of the appellation and are north-facing, for greater freshness. Over Ribera del Duero—set in the heart of Castile, in a valley carved fifty million years ago by the “river of gold” from which it takes its name—hangs an almost mystical atmosphere: powdery, melancholic.
Tinto fino (commonly known as Tempranillo) takes root here as bush vines that open like hands stretched towards the sky. A heritage of 25 clones, selected from the appellation’s oldest plots for their ability to produce well-aerated bunches, has been preserved—“essential if we are not to lose Tempranillo’s freshness,” insists Gonzalo Iturriaga, Vega Sicilia’s cellar master. The vineyard is tended by 70 full-time workers, in a very “green” way, borrowing certain biodynamic methods without seeking certification. “You have to respect the vineyard, but you also have to be able to react. Antibiotics aren’t good for humans, but sometimes they’re indispensable,” reasons Don Pablo.
No vine younger than 11 years is used—a strict rule adopted 35 years ago. “Below that, the quality isn’t sufficient,” Mr Álvarez continues. Contrary to some neighbouring bodegas, old vines are not Vega Sicilia’s grail. Those used for Único have an average age of 35, with an expiry date set at 65. “We consider that beyond that age, the vine begins to decline. It’s like man: no one is better at 100 than at 50,” Pablo Álvarez compares.
The region’s austere, capricious climate is summed up by the popular saying: “nine months of winter and three months of hell,” referring to the dramatic diurnal range, with temperatures spanning from –10 to 40°C. The vine has only a tiny window in which to ripen its berries; it flowers in June, sometimes even July. Green harvesting helps limit yields for both Único and Valbuena, whose respective productions never exceed 125,000 and 200,000 bottles per year, despite the size of the vineyard. To optimise quality, one must dare to sacrifice a large part of the crop—sometimes all of it: certain vintages deemed insufficient are simply not produced.
Grapes are picked while still “crunchy.” “We look for the al dente side of the berries to preserve acidity and fruit,” the cellar master explains. The finest sites lie at 700 metres altitude on hard, immaculately white chalk soils with high pH, yielding angular, taut wines. “On these soils, the grapes have unmatched tonicity.” The estate counts 19 distinct terroirs and a mosaic of 55 parcels, vinified separately in gleaming, high-tech equipment, entirely renewed every seven years. The just-harvested bunches are brought into an immaculate winery. “It’s very important to keep the cellar perfectly clean—the wine absorbs everything,” insists Don Pablo—an hygienist approach that is not necessarily the norm in Spain.
The berries are cooled in cold rooms so that, once in tank, extraction can be extremely gentle for Tempranillo, an intense, deeply coloured grape that can quickly tip into clumsy heaviness. It is blended with 5 to 20% (depending on the vintage) of French varieties: Cabernet Sauvignon for Único, Merlot for Valbuena. Then time no longer counts.
The wine begins a wooded ballet—racked, blended and moved again and again—through a learned sequence of new barrels, large wooden vats and stainless steel, followed by extended bottle ageing. Renowned for its seemingly endless élevage, Vega Sicilia has no magic formula: the wines’ “education” is tailored to their personality. Único spends at least one year, for 75% of the wine, in new barrels—half French, half American—then more than four years in large wooden vats, followed by four more years in bottle. “The American oak barrels we make with our cooper are very important: they round the edges of our powerful juices and give them body. With French barrels, we go in search of spice, structure and length,” analyses Gonzalo Iturriaga. Único is rarely released before it is ten years old.
This relationship to time, without preset rules, delivers a crucial lesson in humility. “Time is essential in wine. It’s difficult, emotionally. When you’re young, you think you’ll see everything. As you grow older, you accept that you will never see the result of certain things,” observes Pablo Álvarez. Superlatives follow one another to describe Único: austere at first, it develops majestically into a deep, animated substance, with suave flavours and seemingly infinite ageing potential. Even its protagonists do not fully explain it. “Jesús Anadón, who looked after the estate for forty years, confessed to me, when he was very old, that here there is something magical—things don’t happen as they do elsewhere,” Pablo Álvarez recounts, before adding: “We don’t know where this special taste comes from. It’s simply nature speaking.”
