The Grandees of Spain
While it is true that Spanish wine was almost universally thought of as plonk until the 1970s, Spain has actually been producing great wines for more than a century.
Some time ago, the products of eleven bodegas were offered for sale at a Christie’s auction of old Riojas. The vintages ranged from 1871 to 1998. The oldest, and the first on the block, was a Marqués de Riscal 1871. It fetched £2,090, more than double the estimated selling price. Another two bottles of the same wine brought lesser prices of £880 and £550.
‘A bottle of Marqués de Murrieta 1877 fetched £2,420’
The highest price of the day was carried off by a Marqués de Murrieta 1877, at £2,420, although a 27-litre bottle (36 normal bottles) of Murrieta Castillo Ygay 1970 fetched £5,280. Murrieta scored again in the white department, with £1,100 for a Blanco Reserva 1950.
At the lower end of the scale, a Faustino Gran Reserva 1964 fetched a modest £39 (10% below estimate), and an Age Gran Reserva 1959 £39 (50% above estimate).
It would have been interesting to see what some old wines from the Ribera del Duero region would have brought. A Vega Sicilia Unico 1981, for example, or perhaps an even older vintage? With no disrespect to the great Riojas mentioned, it would have seen them all off. (In fact, Christies did sell a magnum of Vega Sicilia Unico 1962 for five-digit figure in Japanese yen.)
George Rainbird, writing in 1966, nominated Vega Sicilia as Spain’s equivalent of Romanée Conti. Winston Churchill, invited to the Spanish Embassy in London, congratulated the Ambassador on the excellent ‘French’ wine served with the dinner. It was of course a Vega Sicilia. So why is Vega Sicilia Spain’s most famous wine?
‘When Don Eloy Recanda y Chaves decided in 1864 that instead of importing French wines he would try to produce Spanish wines of the same quality himself, his travels took him to Bordeaux. From there he brought back to Spain the three great French vines, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Malbec. The local wine of the region where he planted the vines, Ribera del Duero, was and still is, made from Tinto Fino (or Tinto aragonés, virtually Tempranillo). On its own it was a hard, tannin-laden drink, made and consumed within a few kilometres of the vineyards, and certainly unfit for greater things.
The rise and rise of Duero wines has been dealt with by me frequently, and no lover of Spanish wine will should need reminding of the huge demand which currently exists. Today’s production methods are state of the art, and the resulting product commands high prices on world markets.
Vega Sicilia Unico unquestionably leads the Duero field. It is usually made from 65%-75% Tinto Fino, with Cabernet Sauvignon and a little Merlot and/or Malbec. The wines are in such demand that the bodega has never spent a single cent on promotion or publicity, and each year the vintage currently available is distributed by a rationing system which has existed for decades. Indeed, this is the only problem with the wine: it is hard to find. The classical method of buying the wine is to apply to the bodega to be put on the waiting list.
When there is a place on the list (the wait can take decades, and is usually preceded by a death) you will be eligible to receive a few bottles each year, amount and price unknown in advance. If you ask for 12 bottles you may receive 2, and you will still consider yourself lucky. No wonder that the right to a place on the list is handed down through generations of the same family.
As a marketing tactic there can be none better, but the wine is genuinely in short supply. From a recent vintage only 200,000 bottles of Vega Sicilia Unico will see the light of day after 10 years of maturing in oak barrels. Each one will bear the antiquated label which has not changed in decades, and an individual bottle number.
The bodega has had a chequered history, with severe ups and downs. During one of the downs within living memory it ended up as a bank repossession and could have been bought for just 20 million pesetas. A friend of mine was offered it but turned it down because the estate included a dairy herd – and he knew nothing about cows. Of the total of a thousand hectares, only 150 are down to vines.
In 1980 Pablo Alvarez, who made his fortune with the Eulen household cleaner business, bought the bodega. Fortunately, Alvarez was and continues to be determined to maintain the highest standards, and recently announced he would be investing more than money pesetas in installing wooden vats for the fermentation. This is a return to past practices, and will replace the stainless steel tanks which all wineries use today.
Current prices for Vega Sicilia Unico are high. These are not unreasonable if compared with top clarets – which the wine usually beats in blind tastings, even in France – although it is when looking at the older vintages that the scarcity value really comes into play.
The best place to find a selection of vintages is on the Internet. Just put in Vega Sicilia and you will find hundreds of pages. Otherwise you will have to be patient. However the good news is that there are two other lesser but still excellent wines from the same stable. The Valbuena has the same grape mix, but enjoys only 2 years in the wood and 2 in the bottle. The price is about half that of the Unico.
The even better news is that in1987 the bodega acquired 28 hectares of vineyard 12 kilometres away from the main winery, with the intention of planting a few vines and building a new bodega to take care of the overflow from the main one. But in view of the spiralling price of vineyard land in the area it was finally decided to plant it all with vines, and eventually the area was increased to 100 hectares. This is Bodegas y Viñedos Alion, and although the wine cannot hold a candle to the Unico, it is still one of the best Ribera de Dueros you will find. With14 months in wood and another 14 in the bottle, it sells for good money.
The most recent release of all the Vega Sicilia wines was in May, and you should find it, albeit for the very limited period it will remain unsold, in most good wine stores, including Casa Pablo and the Vinacoteca La Cartuja, Marbella. The Corte Inglés usually has a selection available, particularly of the Alion.
