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They have a quite amazing list of wines at Taberna Palo Cortado with more than 300 references, many of them new to me even after nearly three years of hunting out obscure sherries.

This is just such a one, and a great example of the “new old”. I gather these guys have a five hundred year old bodega – at least the physical premises are said to be that old – but as far as I know they didn’t start selling their own wine until recently. They have been involved in the wine business though providing bottling and other services for other bodegas. Now the time has apparently come for them to sell their own family soleras and this is the fino.

It is definitely what you would call an “artisan” product. Has a deep old yellow-green color and is sweet on the nose, with hints of fennel leaf, and not a great deal of biological influence. Then it is broad and heavy on the palate, saline without being zingy, seems like a fair whack of glycerine and again a lot of that liquorice root. Blind I would probably guessed it was one of the ecological pedro ximenez en rama finos (but since I didn’t taste it blind I am going to say a mosto from somewhere inland like Trebujena).

Not really my kind of thing – but it is certainly full of character.