Intense cherry red color, with slight purplish edges. On the nose, coffee, tobacco, fruits and milky aromas. All this with a very thin bottom of perfectly integrated wood. Powerful and opulent flavor, well structured. Great aromatic persistence and ample retro-ofaction.
What the critics say...
Wine Spectator: 95 points(15/11/1999)
Muscular but not overbearing, this big Spanish red marries ripe fruit and plenty of oak, with a nice mix of plum, chocolate, licorice and spice flavors backed by firm, well-integrated tannins. Harmonious and long on the finish, it's stylish yet with traditional character. Drink now through 2008.
Robert Parker: 92 points(01/04/1998)
Spain's most consistently great winery continues to turn out exciting wines. There are four Unico Reservas currently in the market. The 1986 Unico Reserva tastes as if it were only 4-5 years old, evidence of just how youthful these wines tend to be. The color is an opaque plum/garnet. A harmonious wine, that appears to have much of its development ahead of it, there is good glycerin, full body, copious tannin, and a backward yet promising style. This wine is less accessible than the 1985, 1983, or the 1981, and may merit an even higher score. It is one of the few Vega Sicilia wines that will require cellaring at its release.
In 1864, Eloy Lecanda founded the winery that symbolizes the golden legend of Spanish red wine. Throughout its long history, it has belonged to different owners, although it has always maintained an unquestionable personality, making concentrated, mature, generous and extremely elegant. The... current stage began in 1982, when El Enebro S.A., a company owned by the Álvarez Mezquíriz family, acquired the winery and the vineyards from the Venezuelan businessman Miguel Neumann. From that year onwards, the family, with David Álvarez and his sons and daughters Pablo, Jesús David, María José, Emilio, Juan Carlos, Elvira and Marta, have developed a policy of harmonization of present innovative techniques required by the wine sector with the traditional winemaking process. The vineyard area has been extended and the vineyards and vines, which were almost half a century old, have been replanted in rotation.
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