Vega Sicilia Alion 2018  £82.17

Vega Sicilia Alion 2018

Ground-breaking and independent, and the result of the evolution of a famous family of great wines.

Recognised, distinguished and praised for the authenticity of its temperament, Alión today symbolises a universal and forward-looking spirit.

The wine is produced using the Tinto Fino variety. The grapes are harvest by hand in 12-kg boxes and are taken immediately to the winery to the sorting tables. Fermentation takes place in wooden tanks under controlled temperatures until a good polyphenolic structure is obtained which will provide the generous colour and firm structure that makes up part of the personality of this wine; and finally the ageing of between 12 and 14 months, depending on the characteristics of the vintage, is performed in full in new French oak Bordeaux barrels. These barrels, from the leading Bordeaux firms, are a significant investment in oak as, harvest after harvest, all the wine that is produced in Alión will be aged in new barrels that, after the wine is decanted to be a bottle, will not be used again by the winery.

Once the wine is removed from the barrels, it will remain no less than 15 months in the stillness of the bottle, where it will end up assembling all the primary aromas of the fruit with the hues from its delicate ageing, resulting in an intense, complex and fleshy wine, but where the elegance is a distinguishing feature and hallmark of the winery.

95+ Points Robert Parker

The 2018 Alión follows the path of the 2016: it is fresh and elegant and from a cooler (more Atlantic) vintage with more rain than the average and a relatively late harvest between September 28th and October 12th. They used 80% new barrels, with up to 10% made of American oak looking to (in their own words) give more sucrosity and sweetness to the wine, as it's a more vertical, tense and elegant expression of Alión. Part of the wine matured in concrete (something they started in 2016), and in 2021 they are experimenting with a 4,000-liter Rousseau foudre, as they want to keep working the texture and freshness. The wine is ripe at 15% alcohol and has a pH of 3.8 and a mellow 4.6 grams of acidity, round and soft. The wine matured until it was bottled in June 2020. The truth is that the wine comes through as subtle, elegant and balanced, with very integrated oak and a nice texture. It's one of the finest vintages for Alión. 257,257 bottles, 7,005 magnums and some larger formats produced.

Luis Gutiérrez