2021 Bela Ribera del Duero Villalba de Duero is sold out.

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Advocate: the “textbook profile of classical Ribera”

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  • 92 pts Wine Advocate
    92 pts RPWA
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2021 Bela Ribera del Duero Villalba de Duero 750 ml

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  • Curated by unrivaled experts
  • Choose your delivery date
  • Temperature controlled shipping options
  • Get credited back if a wine fails to impress

High Altitude Character from a Historic Estate

Ribera del Duero has long been ground zero for some of the country’s biggest and richest wines—and not just at the collector level. This 2021 Bela delivers sophistication and polish with high-elevation complexity and freshness for what Wine Advocate called the “textbook profile of classical Ribera.”

The area is home to some of the highest-altitude red-wine vineyards in all of Europe, and when CVNE—the 138-year-old Spanish producer that minted the country’s first-ever Wine Spectator Wine of the Year—decided to make a single-vineyard, high-altitude Tempranillo, they came here. Joining forces with the Bela winery in Villalba de Duero, CVNE’s goal was to blend the pedigree and sophistication of their Rioja wines with Ribera’s intense power.

The vines at Bela spider deep into the clay and sandy loam soils. They flourish by ripening in the roasting sun and shrugging off the hydric stress of the dry summers. The vineyard sits at over 2,600 feet of elevation, and the exposure of the raised plateaus accentuates the region’s extreme continental climate. It may be sweltering by day, but the chilly nights imbue the wine with classic Tempranillo grace and freshness. 

CVNE is well-known worldwide: It stands for Compañía Vinícola del Norte de España, and they have built one of Spanish wine’s grandest histories over their 140 years. They harvest the  grapes by hand, sorting rigorously, then cold-macerate them to bring out all the complex aromatics from the skins. Then the wine is fermented in stainless steel before six months’ aging in new and one-year-old French and American barriques, a step that adds the sweet spices and gentle smokiness that complement Tempranillo so well.