Wine number 3 of the tasting at the Taberna Palo Cortado was this absolute beauty. Another single vintage wine, now 61 years old, and showing sensational integration.

A deeper black brown in colour, like crude oil, this had the most amazing, surprizing, nose. Yes it had raisins and maybe chocolate, but it was for all the world like an overripe Chateauneuf du Pape with jammy fruit and spices, again oranges, but now mouldy orange peel from the back of the bin.

Then on the palate this came across as lighter, with nice acidity and sweeter spices, no astringency and much less mineral than the 1965. It again had a bittersweetness to it but rather than savoury it was the bitterness of marmalade, with acid and bitter citrus  – your man from Toro Albala came up with a great descriptor: the bitterness of orangey hands after peeling an orange. After that bitterness there was a different kind of sweetness, concentrated and dense, like black treachle and which just seemed to last forever.

Really out of the top drawer – an epic wine.