About fifteen years ago, a good mate of mine came into a stash of iconic wine. It was an odd situation, where he was given the run of a top-end heavy cellar as thanks for houseminding a trophy home on Sydney’s lower north shore. As you do. Naturally, he shared the wealth, which meant every time I popped around, we would wander into the custom-designed cellar and open something epic – old Chateau Montrose, Cheval Blanc, and most notably a few bottles of the 2005 release of Vega Sicilia Único Reserva Especial.
The last one cut differently.
I’d read about Vega Sicilia’s multi-vintage Ribera del Duero unicorn, but had little concept of just how much I’d be entranced by a true Spanish unicorn. I can still taste that wine and for years after, the wines of Vega Sicilia have occupied that little patch of space in my nerd brain that thinks of each country’s icon wines (fun fact – I’m such a wine nerd that I send myself to sleep trying to think of grapes that start with every letter of the alphabet. Q is impossible).
Yet more recently, I think I’ve slipped out of the Sicilia reverential universe. Call it exposure, call it a few alcoholic disappointments, but my Tempranillo benchmark shifted from those Ribera del Duero expressions and into the welcoming bosom of Rioja.
So it was that, when I found myself in Ribera del Duero after the Barcelona Wine Week (and the day after my Rueda expedition), I wasn’t quite sure where my preferences would land. As you can imagine, at a Spanish wine fair, I’d spent most of the week ingesting Tempranillo, and what felt like a shedload of Rioja, so I felt conditioned. But holy moley did I find myself back in love with Ribera del Duero real fast…
Subscribe to keep reading
This is not a paywall. Subscribe for free and you get email updates and I keep AI out.
2 responses to “Falling in love with Ribera del Duero (again)”