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98 WA.
"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." Luis Gutiérrez, Wine Advocate #214, Aug 2014 |