Skip to content

Vega Sicilia 'Valbuena' 5' Ribera del Duero 2018

$360.00 in mix 6+ $400.00 per bottle
Availability: Translation missing: en.general.icons.icon_check_circle icon Only 2 left!
icon 146 tag Created with Sketch. Offer: Mixed 6+ Wine Pricing

icon 146 tag Created with Sketch. In any six wines

Choose ‘any six’ wines on our website and receive 10% discount pricing on any mix six bottles of wine.

This means you can get six different bottles of wine from completely different vineyards at a discounted rate.

Notify me when back in stock

The Wine

18/20 Jancis Robinson MW, JancisRobinson.com, February 2023 '96% Tinto Fino (Tempranillo), 4% Merlot. Winemaker Gonzalo Iturriaga: ‘I love this wine. It’s an iron fist in a velvet glove. But in 2018 you needed great soil like we have. Valbuena is a great expression of our terroir: power and the vintage. (The last year they made a Valbuena 3°, aged for 3 rather than 5 years, was 1988.) 2018 was a bit rainy with oidium but the berries were really crunchy and elegant.’ Just 15 days cuvage with local yeast. They used US or French oak for each lot, though it is vintage-dependent. Normally US 15–30% and French for the rest with about 65% new. Valbuena contains 3–6% Merlot and is made in big vats. After the second year of ageing all the lots are blended together. Iturriaga admitted, ‘I prefer this wine to my kids – especially now that they’re 13 and 14 – worse than a vintage like 2022!’

Fantastic freshness. Really round and glorious and direct. Just a hint of port (same river!) but the freshness compensates. Beautiful texture. Long and seductive. Mountain intensity with some meatiness. Very long.

96 pts Luis Gutiérrez - Wine Advocate (Feb 01, 2023) 'The 2018 Valbuena comes from a cooler vintage with good yields that required sorting and selecting in search of a happy and vertical version of Valbuena, pushing a little more and giving the wine a little more oak, especially American (5%). It was produced with 96% Tinto Fino and 4% Merlot that went through a three- to four-day cold soak and fermented with indigenous yeasts followed by malolactic in stainless steel. The élevage was in new and used 225-liter oak barrels and 21,000-liter oak vats. It has 14.5% alcohol and a pH of 3.8 and 4.78 grams of acidity (tartaric), so it's ripe and with mellow acidity that gives it a mellow mouthfeel. This is a very spicy vintage for Valbuena, getting closer to the style of Único (while at the same time I felt the 2018 Pintia from Toro was getting closer to the aromatics of some vintages of Valbuena, like 2010). It was a late-ripening year with a tendency toward freshness in the wines. The palate is medium to full-bodied, with very fine tannins that made the wine nicely textured and very elegant. There is a lot of regularity in the Valbuena of the last few years, here with more tension and freshness of the 2017, a little more balsamic even....It was bottled in May 2021. Drink 2023 - 2032.

96 pts James Suckling 'Deep and complex, with fresh black and blue fruit and an attractive floral and peppery note to this vintage, followed by hints of cedar, sweet spice and vanilla. Very dusty and juicy on the palate, with mealy, powdery tannins that interweave with the fruit. A Valbuena 5 that you can appreciate earlier. Drink or hold.'


The Details
Variety - Tempranillo
Country - Spain
Region - Ribera del Duero
Extra - Cork
Year - 2018
Volume - 750ml

About the Wine Maker

Bodegas Vega Sicilia is Spain's most prestigious wine estate and has produced some of the most renowned in the country's history. Founded in the 1860s and located in Ribera del Duero, two hours from Madrid, the initial plantings at the included Bordeaux such as Sauvignon, Merlot, and Malbec, with the indigenous Tintoino (Tempranillo