The 2025 vintage wines certified by the Regulatory Council of the León Designation of Origin have once again achieved the «excellent» rating, the highest on the technical assessment scale. They earn it for the fourth consecutive time and the ninth in their history, after twelve wines were evaluated —four Albarín whites and five rosés and three Prieto Picudo reds— from a harvest of 3,008,365 kilos of perfectly healthy grapes.

They achieve it for the fourth consecutive time, after twelve wines were evaluated: four Albarín whites and five rosés and three reds of Prieto Picudo, its flagship variety. It is, moreover, the ninth occasion on which the governing body of the wine-producing area in the south-southeast of the province of León and north of Valladolid has won the highest distinction for oenological quality, after having done so consecutively for the harvests of 2014 and 2015, then those of 2018, 2019 and 2020 and, finally, also those of 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025.

The rating was certified by the members of a once again highly expert tasting panel with a rigorous professional profile, made up of leading wine journalists and critics, representatives of other designations of origin, oenologists with senior technical and managerial responsibility at national and international level who also carry out their activity in different production areas, sommeliers and representatives of the hospitality sector and haute cuisine. The technical assessment for the rating took place at the Zuloaga Ezequiel restaurant, in the provincial capital.

The qualification panel, essentially external, was made up on this occasion of thirteen tasters: the wine communicators and critics José Peñín (founder of the Guía Peñín and internationally renowned author of some fifteen publications on the sector) and Javier Pérez Andrés (a multimedia and multidisciplinary journalist with a deep knowledge of the territory in every field); Josefina Vila (tenured professor at the Higher Technical School of Agricultural Engineering of the University of Valladolid, member of the Viticulture and Oenology research group and a prestigious trainer of several generations of oenologists); Luis Buitrón (president of the Spanish Federation of Oenologists, who works mainly in Galicia); Begoña Jovellar (secretary of the International Union of Oenologists); Francis Giganto and Rafael Alonso (also oenologists, closely linked to and knowledgeable about our territory and its wines); Raúl Escudero and Elisa Fernández Barbadillo (representatives of the Cigales and Arlanza designations of origin, respectively); the restaurateurs Yolanda Rojo (head waiter and co-owner of the Michelin-starred Restaurante Pablo) and Marcos Vidal (who is also a sommelier) and the sommeliers Mónica González Diñeiro (three times the best in the province and a winegrower active in El Bierzo) and Lidia Martín (the youngest in that professional category).

For the assessment of the 2025 harvest wines, the qualification panel took as its reference four whites made with Albarín grapes and five rosés and three reds —none of them aged in oak— of Prieto Picudo, the two native grape varieties with which practically all the wineries attached to the Regulatory Council make their high-quality single-varietal wines. Once again, the tasters highlighted the liveliness, cleanliness and purity and marked varietal character as the most valued aspects of the wines from a harvest of 3,008,365 kilos of perfectly healthy grapes.

As with previous harvests, the 2025 wines once again stand out for the aromatic explosiveness and liveliness on the palate of the whites made with Albarín grapes, in which the citrus and tropical profiles so characteristic of this variety predominate, with an unctuous and pleasant palate that expresses the perfect balance between the alcohol content and the notable acidity that gives it freshness. The same is true of the rosés, at an excellent moment of evolution, retaining all the freshness, intensity and personality of the Prieto Picudo variety. The quality of the young reds also stands out again, confirming the evolution these wines are achieving, with wines that are extraordinarily fruity on the nose and perfectly express the potential and the strong, well-defined character of the reference variety for the León Designation of Origin. On the palate, the rustic profile of the grape is perfectly polished in a vintage once again very suitable for ageing, also leaving aromatic and gustatory testimony of the varietal strength, rusticity and personality, as well as the great oenological potential, of Prieto Picudo.