Home sweet home – after 10 days in the wilderness what a wine this is to return to.

It is by Emilio Hidalgo and is a very fine fino – I believe it has a mere 8 years or so under flor compared to the 15 of La Panesa. It is also difficult to get (not sold widely but they can help you in Enoteca Barolo, or you can drink it from the barrel in La Venencia).

In colour it is a pale gold with a look of age about it – and absolutely clear. The nose just shouts fino – hay bales and unsalted, roasted almonds.

On the tongue it is buttery rich – a lovely coating to the mouth. It has a super structure to it – starting fresh and small and just getting bigger and bigger, filling the mouth with an intense salty, yeasty, nutty flavour, which stays a long time, holding its shape and leaving a lingering toasted almond taste.

Superb. I love it.

  
Yum, yum, and indeed yum. This is lovely – big, yeasty aroma, big yeasty taste. Almost hoppy like a fancy lager- in fact maybe a little too bitter – and buttery in the mouth. Really tasty.

This effort from Osborne is another of my Marbella supermarket purchases and more of a quaffing fino than anything. When nice and cold it is nice and refreshing, but if you try and extract aromas and flavours the fruit comes across as a little bitter and the aromas a little short – not a lot of body and a thin feel to it. 

  
A couple of good looking medals on the front of the bottle there and this is indeed very drinkable. One of the more widely distributed finos, so I have tried to pay special attention. 

Not a remarkable colour – a clear amber – and a relatively muted nose as well, but quite a rich one, with nutty, salty and fruit aromas – you can definitely detect the mosto in the faint cider notes. 

It is also a little quiet on the palate, salty and even slightly tart at first but once you let it swirl around you start to get nutty bread and then maybe apple sauce, fading away to a dry finish. 

Very nice indeed. 

An old fino in old school bottle (I am trying to work out the fan technique) this has been eight years under flor and minimally treated en route to the bottle – en rama and from the first saca of this year.

The colour is super dark – nearly a fino amontillado – but absolutely clear and a tinge of brown where there might have been green. On the nose there is yeast – dough – maybe a bit of apples and caramel. Then on the palate it is strong, salty, yeasty, with definite yeast flavours that last ages – not as much of the caramel and maybe I was imagining it.

Really tasty – just that bit more elegant than the fino en rama before.

By Primitivo Collantes in Chiclana de la Frontera, this is an unfiltered “unpercolated” en rama from a saca from botas number 36, 92, 118 and 205 – on February 4 this year. (All this came of the hand adjusted label – quite a lot of data as is the modern way.)

It is boldy coloured and has a strong nose (a combination of green grass, herbs and citrus cheese – like a Comte). It is then no surprise in the mouth – at the big, fruity, herby end of the scale. Despite the herbal promise, and maybe because of all those strident flavours, it is not all that long and doesn’t keep it shape very well – sort of fades away to a slightly bitter ending.

On the whole it is not a very delicate wine for a fino – not really my bag.

Is worth two in the bush or something like that. I may be the last person I know to try the 2015 en rama fino by Tio Pepe but better late than never.

Beautiful colour to it – a not too shiny gold and clear as an alpine lake. On the nose it is herbal, in the mouth it is rich and velvety in texture and the flavours are of dry herbs, roasted fruit and uncooked bread – really long and juicy too. Very nice indeed.

It also is immediately recognizable as Tio Pepe – itself  a much better wine than it gets credit for.