2011 Bodegas y Vinedos Vega Sicilia Valbuena "5" Ribera del Duero 750 ml

2011 Valbuena 5°: The “Sexy” Wine from Spain’s Top Producer

The greatest Tempranillo-based wines in Spain aren’t made in Rioja; they’re made in Ribera del Duero by Vega Sicilia. In 1864, Don Eloy Lecanda y Chaves, the founder of Vega, had a dream to make the greatest wines in Spain. His estate remains, 153 years later, the epitome of this idea, a winery whose success is beyond the founder’s wildest imaginings.

The first taste of Vega’s wine can be a life-changing experience — even the most experienced of tasters may find their definitions of great Mediterranean wine challenged, upended. The wines of Vega, made from the local “Tinto Fino” clone of Tempranillo, have served as the benchmark of Spanish reds for over a century. While the top wines from the estate — “Único” and the “Único Reserva Especial” — retail for $350 to $500 per bottle, today’s offer, the “Valbuena 5°,” has always delivered the trademark Vega Sicilia quality in a much more approachable package.

But don’t underestimate this wine; to call “Valbuena 5°” a “Baby Único” would do the wine a stiff injustice. Vega vinifies over 50 different plots separately in any given vintage. Certain plots traditionally go into the “Únicos,” but the estate doesn’t consider the plots that go into the “Valbuena” to be any lesser in quality. You’d get bored eating porterhouse steak every night — hanger, strip, tenderloin aren’t worse cuts, they just give you perspective on the big steak — and so it is with “Valbuena 5°.”

For those of you harboring “Único” bottles with a plan to pop the cork on certain vintages in a decade or three, we applaud you. Most of us don’t have that long to wait. The almost 350 acres of “Valbuena” plots on the Vega Sicilia estate traditionally create a more approachable wine, graceful and elegant in youth, and ready to enjoy now. In fact, the “5” in “Valbuena 5°” is a direct call to the structural differences between it and the “Únicos.” The winemaking team for Vega feels the wine needs only five years of aging in a combination of mature and new French and American oak before it’s ready to drink.

In 2011, a perfect Ribera vintage ushered in a warm, compressed season that started late, but segued into long summer days full of idyllic, Spanish sunshine. Grapes matured at a perfect pace and harvest wasn’t marred by even a hint of rain or frost.

Upon first glance, the 2011 Vega Sicilia “Valbuena 5°” appears like an aged Saint-Émilion in the glass — a dark ruby-purple core with a mild garnet rim. But one whiff and the power of Spain’s Tinto Fino is unleashed in explosive aromas of plush, perfectly desiccated red and black fruits from damson plum and Bing cherry to black raspberry. Savory aromas of exotic Asian spice and a dried potpourri of floral notes tinged with an edge of soy and mushrooms. Luxurious and velvety upon entry, pretty red fruit and strawberry compote mingle with all those black-fruited aromas while a kaleidoscope of Mediterranean herbs accompany a hedonistic black-truffle earthiness. Graceful and polished tannins and flawless acid balance — a wine full of stamina and length that carries through a show-stopper, 45-second finish.

No wonder Antonio Galloni’s Vinous was stunned by the “surprisingly light touch on the palate” of this “sexy” 94-point wine, which also offers “sharply focused” fruit and floral notes bolstered by “harmonious tannins” and an “extremely long, sappy finish.”

Elsewhere: $180 — and the risk of however it’s been stored. Today, just 60 bottles at $139/bottle, DIRECT from Vega Sicilia’s damp and historic cellars in Ribera del Duero. Shipping included on just 1. For those collectors who seek the finest classics from Bordeaux, Burgundy, Tuscany, and Barolo — this is special.