2018 Bodega Alión Ribera del Duero, Castilla y Leon

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.

95 + points Luis Gutierrez robertparker.com

They never stop renovating Alión and the rest of wineries from the Vega Sicilia group. In 2018, which is the vintage of the wine released in 2022, they renovated the vinification zone with smaller vats for more precise vinification and including concrete vats for aging the wine. They have 130 hectares of vineyards in the villages of Padilla de Duero, Pesquera and Valbuena de Duero at some 750 meters in altitude. Production varies between 250,000 and 300,000 bottles.

100% Tinto Fino. 130 hectares of land, unbeatably located on the banks of the Duero River, produce a modern, independent 100% Tinto Fino. These plots, which complement each other, united by the same viticulture as Vega Sicilia, have given rise to firm structured wines.