We discuss a new determination of the strong coupling at the τ-mass scale, α s (m 2 τ ), based on a new vector isovector spectral function, which combines ALEPH and OPAL spectra for the dominant 2π and 4π decay channels with estimates for several sub-leading contributions obtained using CVC from recently measured electroproduction cross-sections, as well as results for τ → K − K 0 ν τ obtained by BaBar. This fully inclusive vector isovector spectral function is entirely based on experimental data, and no longer relies on Monte Carlo input for any of the sub-leading modes. We obtain α s (m τ ) = 0.3077 ± 0.0075, corresponding to α s (m Z ) = 0.1171 ± 0.0010.