A friend mailed me to bring to my attention this list of wines by the glass, including no fewer than ten sherries, at Barcelona Wine Bar in West Hartford. The list has a bit of everything – fino, manzanilla, amontillado, palo cortado and oloroso, from palomino and px, Jerez, Sanlucar and Montilla Moriles. If you were over critical you might point out that the Maestro Sierra is for some reason attributed to Alvear.
I am also glad to report in fact that it is just one of several locations (12 in total, in Connecticut, Georgia, Massachusetts and DC). Get down to your local neighbourhood Barcelona wine bar!
Had a great lunch in Surtopia today – the new menu looks really excellent. More importantly, I found out about a great event being organized in November – Lo que se cuece por Cadiz (in English “what’s cooking around Cadiz” (and as I am sure you know Jerez and Sanlucar are in the province of Cadiz)).
The event promises to pair the (fantastic) cooking of Surtopia’s Jose Calleja with wines provided by Armando Guerra, of legendary Sanlucar tavern Der Guerrita. It should be absolutely cracking.
You have two chances – November 18 or November 19 at 20:30 each night – and it is an absolute steal at only €50 per head. I for one will be there – book early to avoid disappointment!
This was a fascinating comparison – have tasted both of these wines separately recently and the notes are below. Liked them both too.
The 2006 Vintage has more zing and is a little more intense, and has a slightly range of flavours – including buttery notes. On the other hand, there are more rounded, bread and nutty flavours in the solera-bred Tradicion fino. My first impression of the Vintage was that it had a big shape but was a little hollow and this umami is probably what I was missing.
Hard to choose between these two – I love fino and maybe prefer the flavour profile of the Tradicion, but the Vintage undisputably has a more precise structure and more discernible features. As they say around here – it is “mas vino” (more wine) and it probably wins by an elegant whisker.
Coming back to this after three days open for some second thoughts.
May be my imagination but it seems a touch darker than I remembered – a gorgeous old gold. The nose is intensely yeasty – ripe hay bales with a little bit of cream cheese and citrus like a cheesecake.
Really nice zing to it – leaves the tongue buzzing – then salinity, broadens into a buttery toffee, before a long yeasty hay bale tail.
I like it even better today. This wine needs some time open.
Am upgrading my rant to post status.
On the left above we have the Regente Palo Cortado in its new packaging, bottled in a stockier, you could say dumpier, “old school” bottle. To be fair, they look original, interesting and even attractive on the shelf – all very minimal and elegant. And they are not the only brand to be making use of original and attractive packaging: off the top of my head the most extreme examples include the Barbadillo Reliquias, Manzanilla la Kika, and the Old and Plus range (again from Sanchez Romate).
But on the other hand, I do find all these different shaped bottles a bit taxing – a fella only has so much storage capacity in his wine fridge and wines that depart from the standard bordelais are as easy to store as square pegs in round holes. I also think there are problems from the point of view of the image of the wine. I believe sherries are wines that need to be packaged as such – by chosing random bottle shapes labels are reinforcing the alarming idea that sherry is some sort of exotic liqueur.
What is more, the cork/stopper on this is also an attractive rounded shape, but when I took the plastic seal off the top there was moisture/stickiness there: if the wine is escaping we need to talk about our priorities here guys.
OK, rant over.
This is the special reserve range palo cortado from Romate in jerez, with an average age of over 15 years.
It has that lovely chestnut colour that is typical of a palo cortado. It also has the smokey honey-ginger notes on the nose.
On the palate it is zingy, gingery, caramel but saline and spiced. Not as finely structured, long or broad as some but a very nice palo cortado.
A white wine from a single vineyard of palomino in Pago Miraflores this has apparently been fermented in a tank and spent 7 months in a bota, no sulphites added and presumably no filtering.
The colour of it is remarkable – it is semi opaque and looks a bit like a very light style of honey. It also looks like a syrup when you pour it – a really gloopy type pour.
First opened (Saturday) I am finding it very restrained on the nose but it may be a little too cool. What there is is like the nose of a cider – very restrained appley notes. On the palate well, it has acidity no doubt, but it is carrying a lot of jammy apple fruit and seems like some residual sugar. Very like cider.
Coming back to this a day later (Sunday) the nose is in fact more like pineapple juice – it probably was yesterday to be honest. I am finding it much more similar to the Sobre Tabla that I tasted a while back from these guys. Also on the palate, a note somewhere between pineapple and grapefruit. Seems much sweeter than I remembered from yesterday.
I still struggle to understand the concept of this wine – I don’t really see what the makers are trying to achieve here. Having said that, it is another interesting experience in getting to know palomino and its characteristics – maybe there are enough crazy people like me for this to be a profitable exercise (hope so).
Flamingopower! Had my first bottle of this just over six months ago – just before, in fact, I started writing this blog, and I thought it was sufficiently interesting to pick up another and write something. It is from Williams & Humbert, a classic old label whose Walnut Brown and Canasta cream sherries were favourites at our house when I was a kid.
This one, of course, is not a cream. It is a vintage fino – statically aged in botas that were put aside in 2006 and bottled unfiltered in 2014. (For a fuller description check out the post on the excellent Sherry Notes.) Pretty unique stuff and very interesting, although I am not 100% convinced that these wines are better than their dynamically aged counterparts.
The colour is a bit darker than straw and clear as a bell. The nose first up was frankly amazing: lots of yeast, even by sherry standards, a bit of alcohol, really herbal and pungent and hints of baked milk. On coming back to it a day later the differences were interesting – definite toasty, honey notes.
It is smooth and potent on the palate. It is buttery in texture and has a buttery, yeasty flavour, with zingy salinity and alcohol. As big as it is, though, I find it a little hollow in structure, not as full bodied as it might be, and although it has a long yeasty tail even that seems a little thin.
Overall a very interesting mouthful, just not as rounded and full bodied as it could be.
Strictly speaking you wouldn’t class Askua Barra as a venue for sherry drinkers as such: only two sherries on the card, a Lustau manzanilla and the Tradicion Fino (saca de mayo 2015).
Having said that, the Tradicion is a beauty and the combination with this excellent, meat intense steak tartare (and with the bone marrow that followed) was a joy.
Moreover, since it is around the corner from La Venencia there is more than one way to skin the cat.
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