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Tasting notes
Youthful purple. An expansive, highly complex bouquet evokes ripe dark berries, incense, candied flowers and vanilla, and a smoky mineral flourish adds urgency and lift. Sweet and seamless on entry, offering palate-staining blackberry, cherry compote and spicecake flavors and suggestions of mocha and cola. Tightens up steadily on the back half but shows no hard edges. Finishes with excellent, dark-berry-driven tenacity and smooth tannins coming in slowly.
Critic scores
Average Score
Richard Hemming MW, jancisrobinson.com
Luis Gutiérrez, Wine Advocate
More reviews and scores
Produced with 100% Tinto Fino or Tempranillo grapes in a modern and fruit-forward style with generous oak, the 2015 Alión is juicy and intense, cropped from a warm and dry year that delivered a 15% alcohol red that is voluptuous and hedonistic. It matured for 12 to 14 months in oak barrels, mostly French and mostly new. At first I found it quite ripe, with black rather than red fruit, a little earthy and with a touch of licorice and ink. The palate reveals abundant, slightly dusty tannins without the quality they had in 2014; it's a little dry on the finish, a riper and more powerful vintage of Alión. The nose improved tremendously with time in the glass as it opened up, but the tannins remained quite present. It might need a little more time in bottle to polish those edges. 230,730 bottles and some larger formats where produced. It was bottled in June 2017.
Bold, overripe black fruit with a flavour profile that seems a little crude, and not much in the way of subtlety. Perhaps just too young to be fully appreciated just yet. (RH)
About the producer
Vega Sicilia is undoubtably Spain’s most famous winery; a true icon in fine wine with a history dating back to 1864.