I remember well selling (and drinking) the 1986 Único when it was first released back in the 1990s, but I had somehow missed the 1985 vintage. This wine was included generously by John Chapmen at our New York tasting, as...
I remember well selling (and drinking) the 1986 Único when it was first released back in the 1990s, but I had somehow missed the 1985 vintage. This wine was included generously by John Chapmen at our New York tasting, as an “addition” to be tasted blind after we had worked through our lineup of known vintages, and it was excellent. The cépages of the 1985 included no albillo, but was otherwise pretty much a classic blend for this era: seventy percent tempranillo, twenty percent cabernet sauvignon and the remaining ten percent split between merlot and malbec. It received one of the shorter elevages I have seen for a vintage of Único, as it spent its first year in the very large vats, followed by only eight months in new oak barrels and then two more years in casks of older oak. It was then blended and bottled, so it only spent four years in wood prior to bottling- quite short for Único! The wine is now nicely into its plateau of peak drinkability, but will continue to evolve and improve over the coming decades. It offers up a superb bouquet of plums, black cherries, chocolate, dried eucalyptus, spiced meats, laurel, cloves and a topnote of orange peel. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and complex, with a rock solid core of pure fruit, moderate, buried tannins and a long, poised, tangy and perfectly balanced finish. This is a stellar vintage of Único.