Lots of chocolate and berry with some coffee-bean and vanilla undertones. It’s full and layered with plenty of fruit, round tannins and pleasing complexity of smoked and toasted wood. Tar undertone. Very drinkable now, but better after 2022.

The 2017 Alión, the only wine produced here, comes from a challenging year marked by spring frost and a warm and dry end of the season, so they reduced the amount of new oak by 8%. It fermented with indigenous yeasts, and 10% of the volume aged in concrete, completely unoaked. The change in the oak regimen helped with the style of the vintage, which was marked by the frost that hit part of the Alión vineyards. Furthermore, the end of the season was warm and dry, and they had to work to control ripeness and power and perhaps the possibility of more aggressive tannins. It's a classical Alión, with some developed aromas, juicy and round but not heavy, with just a tad of earthy rusticity. With time, it develops more balsamic notes and hints of licorice. - Luis Gutiérrez

Opaque ruby. Primary dark fruit, floral and vanilla aromas are sharpened by a spicy suggestion of cracked pepper and woodsmoke, and licorice notes build in the glass. Juicy and smooth on the palate, offering densely packed, spice-laced bitter cherry, blackberry and fruitcake flavors that firm up slowly with aeration. Shows superb depth as well as energy on the impressively long finish, which is firmed by youthfully gripping tannins. -- Josh Raynolds

A modern take on the Vega-Sicilia estate, Alión comes from parcels on the flatlands north of the N-122, the main road that bisects the property. The soil here is sand and clay mixed with some alluvial deposits from the river; the wine is powerfully concentrated, heady and dense with chocolate and fig flavors over mouth-gripping tannins. Built to cellar.

Concentrated, with firm, polished tannins encasing the black cherry reduction, cassis and licorice notes woven together with balsamic, cocoa and spice details. Underpinnings of wild herb, loamy earth and hot stone follow on the structured finish. Drink now through 2033. – GS