The original UBE, 100% palomino from the Las Vegas vineyard in Carrascal de Sanlucar, and the third vintage of it that I know of after 2013 and 2014. Not just any palomino of course – three old varietals – that grow on the looser, antehojuela albarizas of a pago with a strong Atlantic influence.
It all adds up to a wine that is fresh and vertical – that barely touches the side of the nose, mouth and throat. The aromas and flavours are of white fruit and white flowers – the chamomile of manzanilla fame – which are fresh on the nose and at the start of the palate but then turn jammy and intense, jammy flavours that the mouth watering salinity stretch out and out – for all its vertical profile it is incredibly long. Long enough for me to finish the glass, write this paragraph, and fetch the bottle from the far corner of the house while still tasting it.
And as the wine is open it grows in flavour and aromas – the white flowers become more and more herbally aromatic, and the jammy fruit becomes more stewy, but in a wine that is all lightness, freshness and salinity.
The levity can be measured in degrees – only 12.5% – but the freshness and salinity are products of the variety and a clue as to what made the wines of the region world famous: the ability to concentrate flavour in freshness. At a time in history when wines were white and prized for their concentration, the fine profile of palomino must have been a fresh breeze.
And it is of course a wine made by Ramiro Ibañez, a special winemaker who has done as much as anyone to revive the fortunes of this most historic of wine regions, by projects demonstrating the importance of terroir and vintage, through publications, appearances and media, but most importantly through the pure expression of terroir in wines like this one.
His very good health, and time for another bottle …
This is just a monster of a wine – so potent, savoury and saline.
It is made by Ramiro Ibañez from 100% palomino fino grown on barajuela albarizas in Finca la Charanga, Sanlucar. It has a marked “river influence” – relative concentration compared to the much fresher “atlantic” influenced wines from Miraflores and Atalaya, in the argot this is a much more horizontal wine.
You can see the colour – slightly dark gold, telling any observant quaffer that this is more than the average quaff, and if they didn’t notice that the nose is unmistakable: stewed apples and diesel, like a savoury riesling. But on the palate, oh my word, it is a beast. Solid block of flavour that just takes over the front of the tongue and mouth – savoury, savoury, and savoury, a hot salty finish on the tongue and then some afters – with those jammy stewed apples coming through.
Really outstanding, superb wine, but a wine that is unique to the South of Spain. It is the opposite of fruity – not dry, but savoury – and it has bite and concentration. Really among the best I can remember and I cannot believe I just opened the last one because it also has legs.
A belated thanks to the crew at Lustau who very generously included me in the celebration of their 125th anniversary by sending me this extremely handsome boxed set of special bottlings.
As with their 3 en rama it is a selection that celebrates their presence in all three of the major centres of el Marco – Papirussa manzanilla pasada from Sanlucar, Amontillado Solera del Castillo from el Puerto de Santa Maria and the 1996 Vintage Sherry from Jerez itself. And they are three cracking wines too.
This is the first time I taste the manzanilla pasada from Papirussa and it is a very nice drop indeed. Whereas Papirussa is a bright fresh apple on the nose, here the apples are older and packed in straw, and on the palate too it is a more serious mouthful. It is punchy and zingy, saline and mouth watering, with more soft apples in the flavours that feed to a long saline burn. A really tidy, punchy little wine all round.
And this post was originally only going to describe the manzanilla pasada but I couldn’t resist opening the amontillado. I love the Lustau wines from El Puerto and this is no exception. From the solera in the Castillo de San Marcos bodega this has had four years of biological action, then 25 years of oxidation, 17 of them static.
If it sounds like it is going to be a gem I am glad not to disappoint. Sweet caramel, church bench and sawdust on the nose, when you breathe in deeply a lovely old brandy – a top class nostrilful. It is just as full of meaning on and about the tongue too – again zingy, gum stinging acidity and rich flavours – more of that brandy sensation that fades to sawdust that fills the mouth and up into the nasal channels. A really pronounced barrel effect in fact.
And that left the vintage sherry and, well, it would be rude not to, no?
This is frankly wonderful, I love it. From a late harvested vintage no less than 25 years ago this had its fermentation halted early and the result is a fine sweet palomino wine that has spent the intervening period in oloroso butts. I
It was time well spent too. This has just a stunning nose of Christmas cake while baking – fruits, nuts, spices and booze, maybe a touch of cedar cigar box – and then on the sip (or, let’s be honest, gulp) you get all of that again in a lovely velvety package, with acidity that balances the sweetness and a sticky finish that keeps the party going for ages and ages until fading a final note of cigar at the end. Really superb stuff.
All in all a fantastic box set and a wonderful thing to receive. Many thanks to Lustau once again and many happy returns!
A couple of years ago they passed me a draft of a first section of a book intended to tell the true history of the wines of Jerez and Sanlucar. It was pretty dense: knowledge and enthusiasm per square inch off the chart, and a story that I had never heard before.
And they started with an explanation of how these wines used to be called. Palma, Raya, and everything in between. It was pretty nerdy – wine names you had never seen and a narrative coming from a whole new direction. But it rang true. Every wine lover and wine maker – even this wine bluffer – knew it to be true the moment that they read it. At that time it read like a theory in need of practice. But now you can experience the practice, and you can really appreciate the power in the theory.
This wine is the successor to a wine called oloroso. My guess is that it no longer can be called oloroso, because it was, like its sibling the palma cortada, cut off in its prime.
If it cannot be called an oloroso it is a mistake, because it might not be as aromatic as some but it is an almost divine representation of the effect of oxidation. The first time that I tried Oloroso la Barajuela, a few years ago now, I was mystified – I have had more oxidated burgundies (quite often). But then I was looking for more oxidation, more concentration, and I overlooked the wonderful way the palomino frame carries the oxidation.
And just as the flor can be cynically used to produce effects rather than wines, – carve wines too fine, produce too much haybale and too much sea air at the expense of too much fruit – oxidation can be thought of as just a tool for producing caramel, toffee, black toffee and burnt toffee, when in reality it can be a way of turning white fruit, quite literally, gold.
I mean it stands to reason that olorosos didn’t just start leaping from the barrel at 12 years old. There must have been a moment when people started noticing how nice these wines were with a bit of oxygen – before we all started overdoing it.
And that is what we have here, in this white wine from the greatest vineyard in Jerez. And it is what we are beginning to see too in its counterpart from Sanlucar, Agostado. Both of them are white wines so solid on their frame that that oxidation is not a defect but a burnish, a polish.
And those words – palma, raya, cortado – they are on bottle labels, wine lists and, hopefully, in publications, and blog posts, and rankings. And the word will spread.
And who knows? We may one day see the second section of the book even …
No jokey posts this time or corny lines, serious business tonight with a serious wine. This is the original UBE, one of the first really serious unfortified palomino wines I ever tried and with each passing vintage I am more convinced that it is one of the very best.
It is from the las Vegas vineyard in El Carrascal de Sanlucar, a plot with old, ungrafted vines of some of the original palomino varieties, palomino fino, palomino de jerez, and pelúson (aka big hairy palomino) growing on the loose, antehojuela albarizas of Carrascal de Sanlucar, one the most Atlantic influenced pagos of Sanlucar and el marco. It is fermented in bota and then spends another 20 months there – without flor – growing into this beast of a white wine. Since then it has been a good year and a bit in the bottle already although I think it is fairly recently released.
All that time in the making: a vine that had been slaving away for over 100 years, fruit that spent 2017 making itself, 20 months in the barrel and a year and half in the bottle. And after all that he bottle disappeared in the blink of an eye. One moment it was there. The next moment, it was no longer there.
But what a moment there was in between. This is not only an excellent example of what unfortified palomino is all about it is a truly lovely wine on any terms. In colour (slightly dark gold), aroma (citrus, herbs and sea breeze) and above all on the palate, where it has incredible range and even more extraordinary finesse, it is just a remarkable sup. That range goes all the way from white flowers to stewy herbs, passing through white fruits, jammy fruits, and sweet herbs on the way. And it does it with understated power and an elegance and clarity that is really quite remarkable.
Yes I enjoyed it. What often happens when I open one of these is that three go down in quick succession but that is not happening this time. Iron discipline is at work, but so is the shortage of supply. I am going to quickly sort out the latter, and we will see about the former.
They say better late than never so here is a long overdue write up of a cracking night – all of three months ago during sherry week – when we celebrated one of my favourite projects in one of my favourite places.
The project in question is the “Mayeteria Sanluqueña”: José Manuel “Manu” Harana, Rafael Rodriguez, Antonio Bernal and Daniel Rodriguez, four “mayetos” that make up one of the most intriguing stories in el marco de Jerez.
“Mayeto” is the traditional term in Sanlucar for a small scale grower – of anything really (if you haven’t tried the potatoes from a navazo you haven’t tried real potatoes) – but particularly vitis vinifera. Historically these small producers have played a big role in the wines of Jerez: mayetos have been responsible for a large proportion of production, although at least in recent years their numbers and production have fallen, and have tended to be limited to supplying the cooperatives and larger bodegas.
But now with the inspiration and help of the great viticultor and winemaker Ramiro Ibañez the mayetos of the Mayetería Sanluqueña have started once again to make their own wines. They are unfortified wines from palomino fino sold under the brand “Corta y Raspa” from vineyards in some of the most emblematic and famous “pagos” of Jerez and Sanlúcar: Añina, Atalaya, Charruado, Maína and Miraflores. They make them from their best, oldest vines, with a production of less than 7,000 kg per hectare (a condition of being part of the project, in a region where it is not unusual for yields to be more than 11,000 kg/ha) and using artisanal, traditional winemaking techniques.
And the result is a series of wines that are fresh, drinkable, but which express the characteristics of the vines and vineyards like no other. We are talking honest wines with minimal intervention that let you clearly feel the influence of the altitude, location, climate and type of the famous albarizas.
The only pity is how hard it is to find and enjoy them – here in Madrid or anywhere else for that matter. (Although you can get them from the Cuatrogatos Wine Club). So when I was asked by my good friends at Sagrario Tradicion – a fantastic new restaurant here in the neighbourhood – what they could do for sherry week it didn’t take me long to further my agenda of bringing these wines within reach.
Were it not for the awful year that 2020 has been we would have had the mayetos come and present their wines to a packed house. That was not to be – but we were able to get hold of the few bottles that remained so that Nico and his crew at Sagrario could pair them up with their quality cooking. Specifically we were able to get the Atalaya 2018, “La Charanga” (Maina) 2018 and “La Charanga” (Maina) 2017.
They are wines that come from vines a small distance apart – just 2,8km – but despite being neighbours, the difference in the albarizas, together with the degrees of humidity and freshness in the vines, result in a vegetation of the vine, thickness of the skin of the fruit, concentration, and other possible parameters that give identity and character that make the vineyard recognizable in the wineglass.
In the words of the mayetos themselves:
Atalaya is a pago near Sanlúcar, with “lentejuela” or “antehojuela” albarizas, with a high chalk content, but a looser, less compact structure, allowing an easier development of the roots and vegetation of the top side. It is at about 55 metres above sea level (above the magic 45 metres celebrated in “Cota 45”) and is closer to the sea, with the effects of the fresh, humid winds of the poniente (from the sea). The wine is dry, sapid, saline, and structured without losing freshness and acidity.
Maina is a pago (slightly) further inland, but with more influence from the river and the winds of the “levante”. The poniente winds are weakened by the pago Hornillos (Callejuela), Martin Miguel, and Atalaya that bear their brunt. The altitude is higher, at between 65 and 75 metres. The albariza here is barajuela, the toughest. It is very rich in calcium and structured in layers, making the development of the roots difficult and leading to lesser top vegetation. The wines are very direct, dry and potent, the most sapid of them all. It is the pago richest in content of “diatomeas” (fossils of microscopic organisms) in the marco de Jerez, giving the wine great impact on the palate.
On the other hand, in the case of La Charanga we were able to try the different qualities of two different vintages: the 2017, with a very warm summer which obliged the growers to bring forward the harvest, and the 2018, a year with abundant rain and a very cool summer which obliged them, on the contrary, to delay the harvest to September for the first time in many years.
A tantalising prospect and it turned out to be an absolutely great week by all accounts. I am not sure how many people pitched up – although Sagrario is always busy anyway – but if everyone who sent me a message did then they must have been standing in the aisles. It was fair packed when a group of like minded souls and I rocked up and availed ourselves of the opportunity before the curfew, and neither Sagrario nor the wines disappointed.
From the first I had thought of the two as a perfect match – in Sagrario they like their natural, terroir driven wines for a start, with Nico having been the man behind more than one in his time – but the obsession with tradition and nature isn’t only a wine thing. I will never forget Nico telling me all about where the frogs that generously donated their legs to the cause of his pisto were from and why. But just in general it is a place for simple but imaginative and always nicely carried out preparations of top quality produce and the menu they came up for with the mayetos was no exception.
And the wines, well they were three little beauties – only 2.8km and 12 months in it but three lovely wines that were as different as you could ask for. A perfect demonstration of the potential of the terroir of Sanlucar and Jerez and one of the best wine experiences for a long time.
One of the new crop of wines from the Barajuela project and another stunning chip off the wonderful block called el Corregidor.
I say a new crop of wines because we are not just talking about a new vintage (although it is a vintage wine – a 2017), we are talking about a new beastie altogether: no fino, or oloroso, but a “palma cortada” (and the other wines released in this batch are the “cortado” and the only slightly more familiar “raya”). What can the reason for this spiffy new moniker be? Well I have purposefully not done any research or asked the man himself (he said as if anyone expected this blog to have actually researched anything) but my guess would be that this “palma cortada” was a wine that was selected for “palma” status (for your reference, the Barajuela Finos used to indicate “una palma” on the back label) but went only slightly off the beaten path and had to be “cortada” (cut off at the knees) before reaching the promised land.
I may be wrong – it may be deliberate – but in any event it is a return to the ancient traditional nomenclature for the wines of Jerez and Sanlucar, a time before industrialization when the mighty white wines of Southern Spain had a fair claim to be considered the world’s best.
It could be considered surprising that in only the fifth vintage of this project what is clearly the “finer” wine with the white label has been rebaptized, contrary to all the norms of brand building and confounding future verticals, but frankly I find that more reassuring than anything. It may be possible to make an unfortified, single vintage fino every year, but the fact that this has been labelled more precisely tells you that the standards being reached for here are genuinely stratospheric, and the transparency involved is, well, a breath of fresh air. And the fact is that in those five vintages we have had only three finos and one oloroso: it is time to recognize that the fruit and the wine do not always conform to such narrow classifications.
And so we step back in time 150 years or so (or more, I have no idea really) and we enjoy our palma cortada. And enjoy is the operative word, because this may not have the word fino on the bottle, but it does have the word “Barajuela”. And even if it didn’t there would be no mistaking its origins or majesty: the flavours are utterly characteristic of the project and vineyard.
It is a beautiful white wine, lovely clarity and old gold colours on the eye, and high register white fruits, concentrated honey-suckle, dried flowers and herbs on the nose (seems sacrilegious to say it but there is chamomile in there). It really looks and smells of ambrosia.
Then you sip it (in whatever quantity you consider a “sip”) and, wow, the acidity and sensation of the wine, that incredibly deep, low to high flavour and tingling, mouth watering finish. The middle of it reminds me of the mellow roasted apples of a really good blanc de blancs with plenty of years of rima and bottle, a touch of oxidation, and the front end also reminds me of champagne with that acidity, but there is a greater umami and herbal depth in the middle part of the palate and the finale is so long, so zingy, it really is sensational.
So don’t be put off by the nomenclature. This is punky by comparison to the quite exceptional 2016 fino but still a superb wine on any register.
Special wines these two – wines from the 4th and 5th botas of a series of 11 that together make up a unique and historic project.
After a bumper harvest in 2012 the guys at Callejuela out aside 11 botas and every year since 2015 have been releasing wines from selected botas. As a project it has everything – it allows you to understand the effect of flor, oxidation, bottle time – and it proved to be the first of many by the enterprising guys at Callejuela. And although the wines are from a single añada they show off the fine, expressive character of an añada wine.
This is not the first time I have tried four or five (we are now on six) but the year or two in the bottle have served them well and if anything the differences seem even clearer. Four is a freshly sharpened manzanilla – dry, punchy and all that chamomile, and while five is still zingy and punchy it has just a touch of roasted apple and, by comparison, is a richer wine.
Lovely stuff and I just can’t wait for six and seven.
In sherry terms Madrid is one of the places to be, if not the place to be, with restaurants and winebars with incredible lists of sherries seemingly in every neighbourhood. But the final destination for the discerning drinker in want of some of the really good stuff, and in particular the really hard to get stuff, is Taberna Palo Cortado.
In Taberna Palo Cortado there is a wine list of over 300 sherries (and other traditional Andalucian wines), all available by the glass. A list exceeding my over exercised imagination. But even that list is not the end of the story. If you dig a little deeper you will soon find yourself being offered wines off the menu that are even more special.
One such is this Anina 2016 by the great Willy Perez. It is of course 100% palomino fino, from old vines on a vineyard called “El Caribe” in the historic pago de Añina in Jerez. It ticks two of my boxes: terroir and (as its name suggests) vintage, putting it right up my street, and it is another example of this new style of concentrated, unfortified white wines that Willy is quickly becoming associated with.
All the hallmarks are there – it is ripe and honeylike on the nose, loads of fruit and only the faintest hint of a distant haybale, has good acidity and weight on the palate and again a lovely mouthful of fruit flavours. Maybe a hint of oxidation up front – certainly not much suggestion of anything biological – but nice mineral and herbal notes in amongst it all. Not quite as saline or savoury as its cousins from Carrascal de Jerez, but excellent, no question.
The only problems with this wine are (a) the small size of the bottle and (b) the small number of them. Not that that stops Taberna Palo Cortado!
Sherry Week 2020 is upon us and, while understandably restrained this year, it is still a great excuse/opportunity to try a glass of one of the world’s great wines. If you’d like to find an event – whether a tapas and sherry offer or a full blown tasting menu – there is a cracking searchable map on the Sherry Wines Website.
In Madrid as always we are well looked after. In Madrid every week is Sherry Week – whether in its Sherry Temples, Palo Cortado, Surtopia, Corral de Moreria or A’Barra, or its wine temples, lead by Angelita Madrid and la Fisna, or the restaurants and taverns with outstanding lists of sherries like Zalamero, Taberna Verdejo, la Canibal, Lakasa, la Taberna de Pedro, La Malaje, Media Ración, Kulto, Triciclo, la Antoja, the “new” Venencia … there are many and I am bound to forget some for which I apologize in advance (luckily I can edit this post later).
But this week there are 29 different locations listed in Madrid, including in the aforementioned Canibal, Pazo de Lugo, Kulto, Distinto, la Antoja, and many others – the full list is on the website – but at the risk of upsetting some very good friends, one event stands out to me: “La Mayeteria Sanluqueña in Sagrario Tradicion”.
La Mayeteria Sanluqueña is one of the greatest things in the new landscape of Jerez (in this case Sanlucar) and the event – a menu paired with wines from two of the mayetos from two pagos that are close by but express different stories, and two vintages – 2017 and 2018 – that express very different times. In fact I should declare an involvement here – Nico asked me for a suggestion of how to take part in sherry week and that was all the excuse I needed to further my agenda on all fronts. I love the traditional wines of Andalucia in all their forms, but palomino, vintage and terroir are my bag in a big way, and if you throw in artisans and tradition, and if the wine is as good as these are …
So get down to your local sherry event, and if you can find them, check out the mayeteria!
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